Europe’s dry rivers are exposing mammoths and Nazi warships

Western Europe is facing its fifth heatwave this year, and the waters of the Rhine and Danube rivers are the lowest since official records began in 1880. The gauge in Kaub, a medieval town in Rhineland-Palatinate, serves as the benchmark for the 1,230km-long river because it is near the Middle Rhine’s shallowest section. On August 12th it showed a maximum depth of 12cm. The previous record, during a drought in 2018, was 25cm. It could fall to single digits in the next few days, according to Germany’s association of inland shipping. That would cut the navigable Rhine in two.