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  • From: "TradingPostPaul" <tradingpost@riseup.net>
  • To: livingontheland@lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: [Livingontheland] LARGE SECTIONS OF U.S. FACING WORST DROUGHT SINCE DEPRESSION
  • Date: Mon, 11 Jun 2007 14:21:38 -0600


The wrath of 2007: America's great drought
By Andrew Gumbel in Los Angeles
Published: 11 June 2007
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/americas/article2643033.ece
INDEPENDENT, UK

- America is facing its worst summer
drought since the Dust Bowl years of the Great Depression. . . 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 centers 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.

Big farmers are now well protected by government subsidies and emergency
funds, and small farmers, some of whom are indeed struggling, have been
slowly moving off the land for decades anyway. The most common
inconvenience, for the moment, are restrictions on hosepipes and garden
sprinklers in eastern cities.

But the long-term implications are escaping nobody. Climatologists see a
growing volatility in the south-east's weather - today's drought coming
close on the heels of devastating hurricanes two to three years ago. In
the West, meanwhile, a growing body of scientific evidence suggests a
movement towards a state of perpetual drought by the middle of this
century. "The 1930s drought lasted less than a decade. This is something
that could remain for 100 years," said Richard Seager a climatologist at
Columbia University and lead researcher of a report published recently
by the government's National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.







  • [Livingontheland] LARGE SECTIONS OF U.S. FACING WORST DROUGHT SINCE DEPRESSION, TradingPostPaul, 06/11/2007

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