AMMAN — The Ministry of Water and Irrigation on Wednesday said it is looking at ways to restore dams' strategic reserves which have been depleted over the past few years in light of scant rain.

As the country's 14 major dams now hold 38 per cent of their total capacity of 336 million cubic metres (mcm) of water, the ministry is formulating a plan to minimise water use from the dams to protect the water storage from decreasing.

The ministry aims to restore the strategic reserve of water that should be kept at the dams during the dry season to prevent the quality of stored water from declining and to protect the infrastructure of the dams, an official source at the ministry said.

"By summer, the dams should be storing a minimum of 25 per cent of their capacity. This is the strategic reserve that we aim to have during the hot season," the official told The Jordan Times.

The dams now hold 127.8mcm of water, the official said, noting that the unstable weather condition that affected the country between Monday night and Thursday channelled some 2.2mcm into the dams.

"We are hoping that the dams will receive more rainwater as the wet season is not over yet and a depression is expected to bring some rain on Saturday," the official highlighted.

He noted that whether or not the dams will still have the strategic reserve by summer depends on how much rain the country receives before the wet season officially ends in late May.

During this time last year, the dams held 157.5mcm or 48.7 per cent of their total capacity, according to official figures.

A weather forecaster at the Jordan Meteorological Department (JMD) said that the country will be affected by unstable weather conditions on Friday, while a wet and cold air mass is expected to prevail on Saturday.

The meteorologist said that the western parts of the Kingdom will witness heavier rain on Saturday, indicating that temperatures will drop back to their annual average for this time of the year.

Daytime temperatures on Saturday will be 10?C during the day and 3?C at night in Amman, according to the JMD.

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