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Vietnam’s Mekong Delta ‘rice bowl’ cracks in monster February heatwave

  • Southern Vietnam’s hot weather peaks in April or May, with temperatures around 39 degrees Celsius, but February saw ‘abnormal’ highs of 38 degrees
  • More than 80 canals have dried up in one district of Ca Mau province, where agricultural production is entirely reliant on rainwater

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A farmer looking at his crop in a dry rice field in southern Vietnam’s Ca Mau province, amid a long heatwave. Photo: AFP
Southern Vietnam, including business hub Ho Chi Minh City and its “rice bowl” Mekong Delta region, suffered an unusually long heatwave in February, weather officials said on Wednesday.
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Several areas of the delta are also suffering drought and farmers are struggling to transport their crops due to low water levels in the region’s canals.

The intense period of heat began on February 9, meteorologists said, with temperatures reaching up to 38 degrees Celsius (100 degrees Fahrenheit) – an “abnormal” high for February in southern Vietnam, which usually sees hot weather peak at around 39 degrees in April or May.

A farmer crosses an almost completely dried up canal in southern Vietnam as its “rice bowl” Mekong delta region suffered an abnormally long heatwave in February. Photo: AFP
A farmer crosses an almost completely dried up canal in southern Vietnam as its “rice bowl” Mekong delta region suffered an abnormally long heatwave in February. Photo: AFP

In Ca Mau province, at the tip of the Mekong Delta, farmer Hong Chi Hieu said that “severe drought” had made the earth “very, very dry” and caused problems using the waterways.

“Most of us grow rice here. We have quite a bumper crop this year, but the dry canals are badly impacting the transportation of our harvest,” he said.

Le Dinh Quyet, chief forecaster at the Southern Meteorological and Hydrological Administration, said the El Nino weather phenomenon and the general impact of global climate change were contributing to the unusually long dry spell, which is still going on.

Globally, 2023 was the warmest year on record, according to the World Meteorological Organization (WMO).

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