Climate
The climate of Belarus is moderately continental, with mild and humid winter, warm summer and damp autumn.
The average temperature in January is from -4°Ń (south-western areas) to -8°Ń (north-eastern areas), in July: +17–19°Ń. The annual rainfalls or snowfalls reach 550–650 mm in lowlands and 650–750 mm in plain areas and highlands. The average vegetation period lasts 184–208 days.
The climate of Belarus is rather good for the cultivation of major grains, vegetables, fruit trees and bushes of the Middle Eastern Europe and particularly for potatoes, flax, annual grasses, fodder root crops.
There are more than 20 thousand rivers and streams in Belarus with the total length of 91 thousand kilometres, and about 11 thousand lakes, including 470 lakes with the area exceeding 0.5 km2 each. Naroch is the largest lake in Belarus (79.2 km2, the deepest point about 25 m). More than half of the water resources are belong to Black Sea basin, the rest belongs to the Baltic Sea basin. The rivers Pripyat, Dnieper, Nieman, Berezina and Zapadnaya Dvina, as well as the Dnieper-Bug canal are important for river navigation.
More than 145 artificial lakes have been created in Belarus. The most important is the Viliya Reservoir (75 km2) that gives birth to the Viliya-Minsk system of canals along which water from the Viliya river is directed to Minsk, the Republic's capital.
The renewable resources of surface and underground fresh water in the country are sufficient for meeting the present and future needs: the river water resources constitute 57.9 km3 per year. The total volume of water accumulated in lakes is estimated at 6–7 km3, the volume of artificial reservoirs is 3.1 km3. The average water intake for the household and industrial purposes does not exceed 5–7% of annually renewable water reserves.
