Monday, August 31st 2026 - 08:46 UTC
Panama has eleven watersheds under water stress and declared an emergency last week, alongside Honduras and El Salvador
The Panama Canal will reduce the number of vessels allowed to cross from 38 to 34 a day from September 3, and to 32 from the 15th, as well as imposing new draught restrictions, because of falling water levels linked to El Niño. According to the waterway's authorities, rainfall since May has been 34% below the historical average and inflows to the basin have dropped 44%. Around 5% of world maritime traffic passes through the canal.
Panama has eleven watersheds under water stress and declared an emergency last week, alongside Honduras and El Salvador. In Tegucigalpa, the sources supplying the Honduran capital reached critical levels and authorities introduced a water supply rota varying between every ten and twenty days.
The event was declared in June. According to the bulletin published on August 13 by the United States National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, there is a probability of more than 90% that it will reach “very strong” intensity between September and early 2027, the highest of the four categories. That classification applies when the ocean surface at a specific point in the equatorial Pacific warms around 2°C above normal; declaring a “weak” event requires just 0.5°C over three months. The agency also puts at 69% the chance that between October and December it will exceed the intensity of every episode recorded since 1950.
