Germany's heat wave: Shining sun and burning fields

In northeastern Germany, there has been hardly any rainfall in recent months. The country's weather service says Saxony-Anhalt received just 15 liters of rainfall per square meter — roughly a quarter of the average. Across Germany, there were just 50 liters of rainfall per square meter, half of the usual amount. Mecklenburg-West Pomerania received more sunshine than any other German state.

The little rain that fell came down very unevenly across Germany. In May, the country's weather service warned of potential forest fires in parts of Lower Saxony. Meanwhile in southwestern Germany, some towns faced torrential rains that flooded cellars and roads, such as here in Fischbach, Rhineland-Palatinate.

The danger of forest fires is extremely high right now throughout the country. The state of Brandenburg faces the biggest threat. In recent weeks, authorities have been forced to put out more than 100 fires. Recently, 100 hectares of forest and wheat crops burned to the ground in the Oder-Spree region. Brandenburg authorities reported that 90 percent of fires are inadvertently caused by humans.

It took 40 firefighters 13 hours to extinguish the flames sweeping through Brandenburg's Oder-Spree region. A fire in Rostock, meanwhile, was not caused by humans — but by a bird. Police say the animal caused an electricity cable to short circuit, which then set a nearby field ablaze.

Saxony-Anhalt's firefighters, meanwhile, are so busy they needed to get creative to find new sources of water. So they headed to a nearby pool to refill their tanks. The dryness, meanwhile, not only makes fires more likely but also poses a major threat to farmers.

The unusually dry weather has forced many farmers to harvest their crops early. The German Farmers' Association has stated that even April was too warm and dry. The following months meant wheat crops ripened much faster than expected, though insufficient rain has produced a low yield. Sudden torrential rainfall, meanwhile, made matters worse by destroying parts of the crops.

Potatoes, sugar cane and corn are usually harvested in autumn. They require much more water than wheat and rapeseed. So due to the unusually dry weather, Germany's corn plants are in bad shape. The German Farmers' Association president, Joachim Rukwied, is pessimistic and fears crop failures could jeopardize the livelihoods of many farmers.

There are two kind of drought: "Drought in a meteorological sense refers to a drop in rainfall within one month below the long-term average," says Stephan Tober of the Helmholtz Center for Environmental Research. This causes a drought in the agricultural sense, meaning that there is too little water in the ground. That's a problem for wheat and meadows on the banks of river Elbe here in Dresden.

"Extreme dry spells can cause long-term damage to trees and recovery takes a long time," says Ingolf Kühn of the Helmholtz Center for Environmental Research. Vegetation has a memory, so to speak, and may adapt if there are several consecutive years with little rainfall. Some German cities have now called on residents to help out in watering trees, so that some day, cacti will not replace trees.

The Rhine River and its tributaries have lowered to dangerous levels, leading to restrictions in shipping. The Mannheim office of the federal Waterway and Shipping Department confirmed that, until conditions change, ships in the upper Rhine can only be loaded with 1500 tons of cargo, down from their usual weight of 3000 or more.