File:Iraq (MODIS 2019-04-15).jpg

English: Unusually heavy and persistent rain doused Iraq and other Middle Eastern countries in late March and early April 2019. Along with sometimes-torrential rain, the mountain snowpack was rapidly melting due to increasing spring temperatures. Though the end of winter and start of spring have brought seasonal floods here since ancient times, this spring has been severe in some areas of Iraq, Iran, Syria, and Afghanistan.

According to an April 10 report from the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Human Affairs (OCHA) published by Reliefweb, the severe weather of late March and early April has largely passed. However, the acute impact of drastically increased water levels in the Tigris River and its tributaries have become even more evident in several provinces, including in the south of the country. More than 1,500 people had been displaced by high water and flooding, with the possibility of 5,000 more threatened with displacement as waters rise.

Local media has reported that water levels in Iraq’s reservoirs and dams have reached historic levels, especially at Thartar Lake. On April 15, the Saudi Gazette quoted dam chief Kareem Hassan, “Today the Thartar barrage is seeing the highest levels of water passing through in its history. We haven’t seen such levels pass through the structure since it was founded in 1956, so 63 years.”

On April 12, 2019, the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on board NASA’s Terra satellite acquired a true-color image of Iran after the torrential spring rains.

The image is centered on Thartar Lake, which sits to the northwest of Baghdad. The city appears gray and is surrounded by green agricultural fields. The sediment-filled Tigris River sits to the east of Thartar Lake, flowing into it in the south, where the heavy tan sediment can be seen discoloring the blue lake waters. In the west, the Euphrates River carries high water, as do the lakes associated with it (Lake Qadisiyah, north and Lake Habbaniyah in the south).