US drought worsens after weeks of improvement

[Zorro]

Source: AP

The worst U.S. drought in decades has deepened again after more than a month of encouraging reports of slowly improving conditions, a drought-tracking consortium said Wednesday, as scientists struggled for an explanation other than a simple lack of rain.

While more than half of the continental U.S. has been in a drought since summer, rain storms had appeared to be easing the situation week by week since late September. But that promising run ended with Wednesday's weekly U.S. Drought Monitor report, which showed increases in the portion of the country in drought and the severity of it.

The report showed that 60.1 percent of the lower 48 states were in some form of drought as of Tuesday, up from 58.8 percent the previous week. The amount of land in extreme or exceptional drought — the two worst classifications — increased from 18.3 percent to 19.04 percent.

The Drought Monitor's map tells the story, with dark red blotches covering the center of the nation and portions of Texas and the Southeast as an indication of where conditions are the most intense. Those areas are surrounded by others in lesser stages of drought, with only the Northwest, Florida and a narrow band from New England south to Mississippi escaping.

Read more: http://news.yahoo.com/us-drought-worsens-weeks-improvement-164724509--finance.html

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Not encouraging news.

The recent PBS Ken Burns special on the Dust Bowl really brought home the impact of an extended Midwest drought.

[evdebbs]

1. This is God's retribution for

Pat Robertson.

[NoOneMan]

2. Not to worry. People will always be a solid source of calories in times of drought

[Ash_F]

5. LOL had to read that 3 times.

Kept reading as "People will always have a solid source of calories in times of drought"

I was thinking "what could that be?"

[Fire Walk With Me]

3. Grow food, not lawns!

[onestepforward]

6. Exactly!

[dipsydoodle]

7. That is in fact the correct idea.

What they do in Cuba is this. They lay out a rectangle made out of with building blocks with the wall about 9" high. Fill with almost pure compost and grow vegetables. They figured back during the oil crisis that if soil was fertile enough it didn't need to be more than 9" deep. You see such things out of windows ,just driving along, all over the place.

Whole video here :

[Fire Walk With Me]

14. Thank you very much for this!

[PaulaFarrell]

4. and not a peep about global warming

<He said there was no clear, scientific explanation for why the drought was lingering or estimate for how long it would last.

"What's driving the weather? It's kind of a car with no one at the steering wheel," Heim said. "None of the atmospheric indicators are really strong. A lot of them are tickling around the edges and fighting about who wants to be king of the hill, but none of them are dominant.">

Talk about being wilfully ignorant.

[Berlum]

9. Willfully Ignorant = Republican

alas and alack

[dotymed]

11. Hey, this drought

proves that global warming is fiction. If it were actually global warming we would be deluged with rain all the time....

[NickB79]

15. Indeed. The melting Arctic really boned us

The jet stream's been shifted north as the Arctic has warmed, and since the Arctic is on track to be fully ice-free by 2020 at the latest, these droughts could well be the norm from now on.

Get used to higher food prices, because they're only going to go up.

[Berlum]

8. The Dust Bowl - Part Deux

Brought to you by the WILLFULLY IGNORANT Republicans.

[callous taoboy]

10. And yet the lady next door continues to water, sometimes all night.

This woman's lawn is emerald green in a neighborhood of mostly browned-out lawns. She has at least one sprinkler going at all times it seems. She is on her own well so she is allowed. This is in central Tx.

[byeya]

12. The Red Drought States don't believe in global warming and maybe I don't believe that

there's a drought. No disaster disignation for you!

[amandabeech]

13. It seems that many of the Global Warming predictions are coming true.

How we will feed the U.S. let alone ship a great quantity of food overseas remains a big question if this weather pattern continues.

The possibility of global warming limiting our agricultural production has made me a little leery of high levels of immigration. I'm afraid that in a few years we won't be able to feed those already here plus those who are new comers. They're not making a lot of new, well-watered farm land anymore.

[NickB79]

16. The honest answer is, we won' t be feeding everyone

The planet is over carrying capacity be several billion; by the end of this century we'll be lucky to have two billion humans left on this world. Starvation, disease and war will balance the equation we refused to do voluntarily.

[amandabeech]

17. A while back, I frequnted a handful of Yahoo groups

where carrying capacity came up frequently.

I'm not so sure where I come down on it, but I think that we would be wise to be careful.