Haven't heard this on my Tee Vee news; The wrath of 2007: America's great drought .......

[babsbunny]

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


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.

[rurallib]

1. I live in Iowa - we've had more weather related damage already

this year than any previous year. Huge blizzard in the west in March, floods, and recently tornadoes. Can't wait to see what the second half of the year brings.

[RC]

2. Look at the maps. Our bread basket regions are doing fine.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=389&topic_id=1083016&mesg_id=1083016

[thunder rising]

3. Okeechobee is a big but shallow lake

I don't want to seem like a detracter from the other side , but what we need is REAL facts and not hyped drama. South Fl just received 8 in of rain in one night. My pool was 5 in down and was sloshing over the side the next morning.

I live 1/2 mile north of Palm Beach County. I own a little airplane and I fly all the time. The marshes catch fire all the time. There is a LOT of shrub to fuel fires. The lake is low and a high spot caught fire. Note however, that there had to be something there to burn. Bare lake bed cannot burn (well below 5/6 hundred degrees I suppose). It was an island and some "one tooth" stalking fish flicked is cigarette. I recall it was this low in about 2000.

Want to get mad about something, get mad at the sugar lobby. Florida gets rain but it's drained off to to the ocean to keep Okeechobee low. This has to do with the sod and sugar fields. A lake is generally a low spot in the earth where what gathers. Okeechobee is a shallow lake, more like very deep swamp and, the big money crop is actually sod. And they grow sod and scrape off the top soil till it just will not grow another crop. Then the saturate it with fertilizer and grow sugar cane. The cane likes a lot of water but not flooding. Since the ground is now lower than it was before the scraping, and the fact that Okeechobee is a shallow lake the water management walks a tight line between drought and flood. They must keep Okeechobee low to protect the sugar cane. Ever wonder why American soft drinks are made with corn syrup? The sugar lobby has one of the best import protection schemes going and they bus illegal aliens in to work the fields; and you never hear about it.

This brings me to a point that I promised myself to remember. Last year at this time there was a BIG scare that the Amazon river was drying up. At that time was in it's second year with the third being the tipping point for recovery. Is anybody there that can walk up the Amazon River bed and snap a few pictures.

Real news is great. Bullshit hype is just that.

[1932]

5. And I don't want to sound like a denier either, but I read that in CA, they're not

worried because although this is a dry year, it's in a five year period where other years have had high rainfall. The article said that what happens in any one year isn't that important. It's whether there's a five year period with low rainfall. The article had a bar chart that showed the last five years have been average or above for rainfall. It also showed a lot of year-to-year change.

[valerief]

4. Yeah, but what about Paris Hilton? That's mostest importantest. nt