May 17, 2019
The ship Hamzeh, which was stranded on dry land six years ago when Lake Urumiyeh shrank, has been refloated by the heavy rains since Now Ruz.
The rainfall has doubled the volume of water in Lake Urumiyeh and boosted its surface area by more than a third.
The head of the Ports and Marine Department of Lake Urumiyeh, Issa Besharati, said the Hamzeh was built in 1995 but was stranded until recently four kilometers from the Sharifkhana port.
Hamzeh used to ferry passengers around the lake.
Officials overseeing the lake report that the volume of water in the lake has almost doubled from last September. The lake then held 1.94 billion cubic meters of water and now holds 3.84 billion. This is still far below the record in 1997 of about 30 billion, but is a huge improvement.
As for the area covered by the lake, which is what most visitors notice, that was 2,317 square kilometers last September, but has now increased by 870 square kilometers or 38 percent. The record in 1997 was 5,200 square kilometers, so the lake now covers about 60 percent of its former area.
The lake is at the center of a large watershed in northwest Iran and is fed by 21 permanent and 39 seasonal rivers.