By Brian Skeele, on March 30th, 2011
Drought is the Impending Bummer of the Southwest. We pay attention to La Nina and El Nino, the ocean currents whose temperature determines how much rain and snow we get in Santa Fe. I think it was the summer of 2003 when we had a serious drought, pinon trees died, and the city went into water rationing. You got a ticket if you watered on the wrong days, or in the middle of the day! There are still dead, barren pinon trees standing across the landscape, reminding us that drought happens.
A few weeks ago I was buying a replacement part for a storm door from the manufacturer in South Dakota and got to talking to customer service about the weather. She was saying they had a wet fall which saturated the ground, and then a lot of snow fell this winter. If the snow should melt rapidly, 1/2 of the upper US will be having serious flooding this spring.
Drought in China has parched 16+ million acres of farmland, threatening the livelihood of 50 million farmers. 20 million people without drinking water.
I shared with her we’ve had a really dry winter and spring. In southern New Mexico, there have already been fires, and the fire danger remains high.
Today I came across this news report that China is having a similar occurrence; really wet in the north and severe drought in the South.
In 2007, NASA released a report that 17 out of 18 computer models predicted permanent, catastropic drought in the Southwest US and the Mediterranean by 2050.
My take on all this, is we had better get good at recycling water!
I’ll be talking about water recycling in future posts, but for now, here is some of the article about China’s Drought… READ MORE >>