The wrath of 2007: America's great drought

[gulfcoastliberal]

Source: The Guardian

By Andrew Gumbel in Los Angeles
Published: 11 June 2007

America is facing its worst summer drought since the Dust Bowl years of the Great Depression. Or perhaps worse still.

From the mountains and desert of the West, now into an eighth consecutive dry year, to the wheat farms of Alabama, where crops are failing because of rainfall levels 12 inches lower than usual, to the vast soupy expanse of Lake Okeechobee in southern Florida, which has become so dry it actually caught fire a couple of weeks ago, a continent is crying out for water.

In the south-east, usually a lush, humid region, it is the driest few months since records began in 1895. California and Nevada, where burgeoning population centres co-exist with an often harsh, barren landscape, have seen less rain over the past year than at any time since 1924. The Sierra Nevada range, which straddles the two states, received only 27 per cent of its usual snowfall in winter, with immediate knock-on effects on water supplies for the populations of Las Vegas and Los Angeles.

The human impact, for the moment, has been limited, certainly nothing compared to the great westward migration of Okies in the 1930 - the desperate march described by John Steinbeck in The Grapes of Wrath.

Read more: http://news.independent.co.uk/world/americas/article2643033.ece

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We're seeing the results of the climate model predictions playing out. Huge storms, blistering droughts, fresh water scarcity, melting ice sheets, disappearing islands. What a train wreck.

[kurth]

1. Time for Floridians to move back to Michigan

Arizonans too.

[Erika]

2. The entire western states are also suffering

Water rights legal fights are in process.

Michigan isn't big enough for all of us.

The climate change is/will be a factor in global depression and wars.

[sutz12]

3. Why are we reading about this in a British paper?

:shrug:

[Odin2005]

4. Becaus our nooze is too obsessed with Paris Hilton.

[villager]

5. as the Latin saying goes, "The question answers itself"

;-)

[madrchsod]

6. "a continent is crying out for water."??

to many people have lost the ability to feel the cycle of life

[Uben]

7. A few facts

I live at a small lake in Texas, and we just ended a two year drought. It rained around us, but we seemed to miss it every time.
It's over, the lake is full, as are all the other lakes in the area. Some were down 26 ft.

The American southwest is now in a drought. But, it is not the exception, but rather the norm. For the last two hundred years, the American southwest has been unusually wet. That was the exception. Now, it is just reverting back to it's "normal" status.....very dry and arid. Climate is cyclical...periods of dry and periods of wet. But these periods can last hundreds and more commonly, thousands of years. The American southwest was inhabited during a short wet period, because there was enough water available to sustain life for humans.

I am not discounting global warming, the evidence is there to support it. I am just saying the current dryness is the norm on the grand scale of climate in the American southwest.

This, of course, does not explain the receding glaciers worldwide, which in my opinion is due to global warming. I believe it is irreversible, and think we are in for hundreds, and more likely thousands of years of warmer climate.

Buy a fan. It's gonna be a long ride.

[BleedingHeartPatriot]

8. What part of semi-arid do people not understand?

The landscape is not designed to support millions of acres of green lawns.

However, if one utilizes the natural flora, one can have beauty and land conservation at the same time.

Our native trees and plants are beautiful, I've never understood the obsession to make the Southwest landscape look the same as the deep South or the Great Lakes states. :shrug: MKJ

[Lisa]

10. one of the reasons why the Colorado and other rivers have been overdrawn?

A hydrologist once told me that earlier in the 20th century, when the water allocations were distributed, it was a relatively wet time. As precipitation became more "normal", water levels dropped but the allocations weren't re-adjusted, so many jurisdictions are currently maxxed out. Another researcher I know was looking at "megadroughts" and the evidence for them in the distant past. I asked him what the ones on the Canadian prairies might have been like, and he said that I would not have wanted to be around for them. Even having slightly less reliable rainfall would affect agriculture in many marginal areas.

Global warming impacts suggest that overall there may be more precipitation in the midlatitudes -- ironic to think that we might have benefited from these changes, if they started a while back! (Of course, this may have been at the expense of Africa and Australia.)

Drought (and heatwaves) are often not thought of as disasters, because they are not as spectacular to look at as big storms or wildfires. But the damage they can do is just as serious, in the long term.

[cliss]

9. WATER WARS

Wars of the future. Near future, to be exact.

Water is a more dire necessity, even more precious than oil. Wars will be fought and won over water rights, declining water, and ultimately dry parched deserts.

It's really scary, but I believe the "Water-sucking lawns" will take care of themselves real soon. They will be a thing of the past, same with swimming pools.