From Yahoo:
“More than 65 million
Americans are experiencing 'severe to exceptional drought'”
As of May 31, around 90 million
Americans were being affected by drought while more than 65 million were
experiencing "severe to extreme drought," according to the National
Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).
The Western and Southwestern
states are particularly parched — nearly three-quarters of the Western region
is in a state of severe to exceptional drought. "There are a lot of
downstream effects when it comes to a drought like this," Andrew Hoell, a
co-lead on the NOAA Drought Task Force, told Yahoo Finance. Hoell
explained that drought isn't just a matter of precipitation but can be
exacerbated by the evaporative effects of higher temperatures and inadequate
snowpack runoff in the winter. "By the time it's summertime,"
he said, "that vegetation is really dry. And if you get a spark, and you
get a series of unfortunate events in that regard, you then have wildfires. So
when it comes to drought in the West, there are just a variety and a spectrum
of effects that you can feel later on whether it's water resources and fires
and reduced agricultural yields. The effects are numerous." Depleted
water reservoirs and wildfire damage are already taking a toll on residents and
businesses. The Hermits Peak Fire, which continues to blaze in New Mexico, has
already scorched around 315,830 acres.
Meanwhile, states like California
have instituted severe water restrictions, though water consumption has
continued to rise. On an even grimmer note, low water levels at Lake Mead have
threatened hydropower plants and exposed bodies once submerged in the
reservoirs. While conditions may ease slightly as the region enters its summer
monsoon season, the outlook remains dry as the region navigates a historic,
multi-decade megadrought. A number of states including California, Colorado,
New Mexico, Utah, Arizona, and tribal nations like the Navajo Nation have all
declared drought states of emergency and allocated resources for managing the
water crisis.
Population growth Since
2000, droughts have cost the U.S. around $160.8 billion, according to the NOAA.
That figure jumps to $272 billion when accounting for destructive wildfires
that are more prone in arid conditions. With water already becoming more
scarce, the increasing population in the West — and therefore demand for water
— has inflamed the situation. An Economic Innovation Group report using
county-level population data found that the trend of people moving to water-starved
states has only accelerated during the pandemic. Inland California, the
Mountain West, and eastern Texas saw the greatest growth, and overall, 10 of
the top 15 counties for population growth were in the Western U.S: Maricopa
County, Arizona (Phoenix), was ranked first, followed by Collin County, Texas,
and Riverside County, California. “The map of these demographic shifts
shows some familiar pre-pandemic trends and some new patterns," the author
stated. "Overall, the Sunbelt and the Mountain West continued to outshine
the rest of the country. Remote rural counties in eastern Oregon and northern
Idaho experienced robust population growth while every single county in Nevada
gained population.”
Another EIG study found that an
additional 20 million residents could move to drought-stricken counties by
2040. Water managers are already balancing razor-thin water budgets at current
population levels." With reservoirs at record low levels throughout the
West and the effects of sustained drought con in the United States over the coming decades
is whether growth trends will ultimately collide with nature’s ability to
sustain such a large influx of people," Daniel Newman, the report's
author, wrote.
Fire and water Doling out
water supplies isn't the only issue residents have to contend with. Suburban
neighborhoods sprawling out into more rural areas are creating a more
substantial wild-urban interface at the same time as the wildfire season creeps
earlier and longer. In the last month, two Colorado Springs
neighborhoods were evacuated due to fires, as were the owners of coastal
California mansions caught in a blaze. For those unfortunate enough to sustain
damage from fires, it can leave lasting financial scars in addition to physical
and emotional ones.“ Most people in the Western United States are very
underinsured because they base the amount of insurance coverage on the average
cost to rebuild” despite higher property costs in some regions like Lake Tahoe,
California, Christina Restaino of the University of Nevada Cooperative
Extension said in a webinar. According to Restaino, the current water
crisis “underscores the need to prepare communities for wildfire, because when
these large emergency incidents occur what we end up having to do is use a ton
of water in an already water-scarce environment to suppress wildfires.” There
are some steps residents in high-risk areas can take to protect themselves,
however.“ The No. 1 thing that people can do is to create a 5-foot
ember-resistant zone around their house, so you don't want to have anything
combustible within five feet around your house,” she said. “Second-easiest
thing, I would say, is to screen all of
your vents. Of equal importance, “be prepared to evacuate,” Restaino stressed.
“If you have medications that you take or important things you cannot leave
home without, make sure you have backups of all those in an evacuation go-bag.”
While the current period of
intense drought may ease in months or years as it has in previous years, rising
temperatures due to climate change mean that many will have to get used to
living with these risks. "If I had to guess — and if there is a silver
lining here — if we're to look at the next 10 years, will they necessarily be
as bad as the last 10 years in terms of precipitation?" Hoell said.
"I would say probably not." He added that the primary problem “is the
climate has not shown any indication of warming temperatures slowing down. That
right there is a problem in and of itself because it changes the amount of snow
that you get during the wintertime, changes the amount of snow that then makes
its way into reservoirs, thereby replenishing them. So we have these different
factors that kind of commingled to bring together this hydrologic situation
that is not ideal for us right now."
^ 90 Million Americans live in
some kind of Drought with 65 Million of those People living in Severe Drought.
Those are major numbers. We had a Drought here last year and it was bad, but so
far have been lucky this year (knock on wood.) ^
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