Due to the prevailing extreme dry weather, 6.5 million litres of water evaporates daily from the Victoria Reservoir alone, the engineer in charge of the reservoir, Wasantha Ehelapitiya said.
He said water evaporation rates are generally higher in hot, dry and windy weather, but the current water evaporation can be described as very high.
Ehelapitiya said that a part of the surface with a thickness of 4.5 mm evaporates everyday due to the strong sunlight falling on the face of the reservoir, which is spread over an area of 24 square kilometres.
He said that the reservoir is currently filled up to 80 percent of its capacity.
Ehalapitiya said that the maximum water level of the reservoir is 438.4 metres from sea level and it is now filled to a height of 432.59 metres.
A volume of 4.143 million cubic metres of water was released for the production of hydroelectricity in the last 17 days and 1.691 gigawatt hours of electricity was generated, he said.
Asela Kuruluwansa