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  • From: "TradingPostPaul" <tradingpost@riseup.net>
  • To: livingontheland@lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: [Livingontheland] More on US drought conditions
  • Date: Wed, 27 Jun 2007 10:42:57 -0600



DROUGHT WRECKS DEVASTATION IN WEST, SOUTHEAST
By Jim Carlton and Lauren Etter Wall Street Journal
June 26, 2007

The worst fire to hit the Lake Tahoe basin in a half century is the latest
fallout from drought in the Western and Southeastern U.S. that is taking a
growing toll on property and agriculture.

The prolonged dry spell is already costing hundreds of millions of dollars
in damages. In California alone, the 13 counties that were declared
disaster areas last month reported an estimated $800 million in crop losses
due to a combination of drought and freezing temperatures. While it is too
early to tell how extensive the Lake Tahoe damages will be, they are likely
to be steep.

• The Situation: The blaze that has struck the Lake Tahoe basin is the
latest consequence of drought affecting the Western and Southeast U.S.
• The Cost: The dry spell has taken a toll amounting to hundreds of
millions of dollars, and the financial effect of the Lake Tahoe fire is
likely to be steep.

"Obviously, it will be in the millions" of dollars, said Jerry Davies,
spokesman for the Farmers Insurance Group of Cos., which, like many
carriers, has dispatched claims agents to Lake Tahoe.

The timber industry has lost millions of dollars, as well. Rayonier Inc. of
Jacksonville, Florida, a forest-products company with 2.5 million acres of
timberland nationwide, has had about 64,000 acres of timber damaged from
fires in Georgia and Florida, amounting to as much as $18 million in damage
so far.

In the Lake Tahoe area straddling the California-Nevada border, a blaze
believed caused by human activity Sunday afternoon quickly spread through
tinder-dry pine forests a few miles south of the lake, destroying more than
200 homes and other structures. Winds that fanned the fire subsided
yesterday, but some 1,000 homes are still threatened. The fire threat in
the heavily developed area is unusually severe because drought left the
Sierra Nevada snow pack at 29% of normal this spring.

Meanwhile, spring in four states --- Alabama, Georgia, Mississippi and
Tennessee --- was the driest in 113 years of record-keeping. In Florida and
Georgia, the situation has been deemed an emergency by state and federal
officials.

The West is experiencing its sixth-driest spring on record, while recent
government reports show the drought might be creeping into the Midwest,
where farmers hoping to profit from the ethanol boom have planted more
acres of corn than at any time since the end of World War II.

Already, economic losses are mounting. In Georgia, peach crops are smaller
than normal, peanuts were unable to germinate in the bone-dry soil, and
wildfires have devoured valuable timber. The water level in Florida's Lake
Okeechobee, the second-largest freshwater lake in the continental U.S., hit
an all-time low on June 1, forcing lawn-and-garden enthusiasts, golf
courses and farmers to conserve water. In Alabama, lack of hay is causing
cattle farmers to liquidate entire herds.

Drought has been a persistent problem for much of the U.S. in recent years.
This year, some areas are parched while others are being hit by heavy rains
and flooding. Some parts of Texas have been declared states of emergency
because of flash flooding. Indeed, early in the spring, many farmers in the
Corn Belt worried that too much rain was going to prevent them from
planting their corn on time.

The drastic weather can be explained partly by a summer-weather pattern
called the Bermuda High that is sucking moisture from the Gulf of Mexico
and dumping it on places like Texas and the High Plains. The problem for
drought-affected areas in the Southeast is that the Bermuda High has pushed
too far to the west. So the typical widespread afternoon thunderstorms and
rain haven't fallen there, meaning little drought relief.

Many scientists worry global warming may be playing a role, too. The kind
of severe droughts punctuated by torrential rain now hitting many parts of
North America have long been predicted as consequences of rising world
temperatures.

About 67% of the Southeast is in some form of drought, compared with 31%
this time last year, according to the U.S. Drought Monitor, an agency
affiliated with the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the National Drought
Mitigation Center at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln.

During summer, it becomes more difficult for areas to recover from the
drought even if a front or a tropical storm comes through. "If the drought
continues as we go into summer, the heat kicks in and then there's a
vicious cycle of dry and hot weather that exacerbates the drought," said
David Levinson of the National Climatic Data Center.

In the Southeast, drought has contributed to wildfires that have consumed
more than 600,000 acres of land, the region's largest fire on record. In
Georgia's Okefenokee National Wildlife Refuge, water levels in swamps are
near record lows, exposing as much as four feet of peat, which has caught
fire.

In the West, scientists say milder winters and earlier snowmelt in the
spring have led to an explosion of fires from the arid Southwest to the
Northern Rockies. A study published last year by Anthony Westerling, a
researcher at the University of California at Merced, and three others
found that the frequency of large forest wildfires nearly quadrupled in the
17-year period ending in 2003 from the previous 17 years, with the total
area burned more than six and one-half times larger in the more recent
period.

Among the hardest hit states is New Mexico. Millions of piñon trees have
died in the past few years following beetle attacks in the northern part of
the state, forcing homeowners in Santa Fe and other cities to spend
thousands of dollars to remove them.

Although New Mexico's drought has been eased by unusually heavy snow and
rain in recent months, people in mountain resort towns, in particular, are
worried about what may come next. In Cloudcroft, New Mexico, residents are
increasingly alarmed over the encroachment of a forestry-bug outbreak on
their resort village of about 800 and the threat of a potentially
catastrophic wildfire they say that has created. "You have the enemy at the
gates, ready to come in here," Cloudcroft Mayor Dave Venable said.

Experts say local forests are facing unprecedented waves of bugs. First
there was the fir looper, followed by budworms and, most recently, a moth
called Nepytia janetae, which, alarmingly, keeps eating all winter and
which foresters say they have never seen before. Although many of the trees
remain alive, most could end up dying and thus leaving a huge tinderbox of
fuel, New Mexico State Forester Arthur "Butch" Blazer said.

At Vo-LaSalle Farms Inc. in DeLeon Springs, Florida, about 45 miles north
of Orlando, owner Steve Crump has had to sell four of his 20 cattle this
year because he didn't have enough hay to feed them. Last year, he got two
cuts of hay, compared with the normal four. "They're eating the palmetto
bushes and the gallberries," Mr. Crump said of his cattle. "There's nothing
else to eat.






  • [Livingontheland] More on US drought conditions, TradingPostPaul, 06/27/2007

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