La Nia is about to take the Southwest drought from bad to worse
Global scientists reported in August that due to the climate crisis, droughts that may have occurred only once every decade or so now happen 70% more frequently. The increase is particularly apparent in the Western US, which is currently in the the throes of a historic, multiyear drought that has exacerbated wildfire behavior, drained reservoirs and triggered water shortages.
More than 94% of the West is in drought this week -- a proportion that has hovered at or above 90% since June -- with six states entirely in drought conditions, according to the US Drought Monitor. On the Colorado River, Lake Mead and Lake Powell -- two of the country's largest reservoirs -- are draining at alarming rates, threatening the West's water supply and hydropower generation in coming years.
Though summer rainfall brought some relief to the Southwest, the unrelenting drought there is about to get worse with La Niña on the horizon, according to David DeWitt, director at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Climate Prediction Center.
"As we move into fall, from October on, the Southwest US, based on all the best information that we have, they're going to see persistent intensification and development of drought," DeWitt told CNN. "There's, at this point, not any indication that they'll see drought relief."
La Niña is a natural phenomenon marked by cooler-than-average sea surface temperatures across the central and eastern Pacific Ocean near the equator, which causes shifts in weather across the globe. In the Southwest, La Niña typically causes the jet stream -- upper-level winds that carry storms around the globe -- to shift northward. That means less rainfall for a region that desperately needs it.
https://www.cnn.com/2021/09/24/us/southwest-drought-forecast-climate-change/index.html
= new reply since forum marked as read
It is a whole lot easier than trying to figure out multiple keys, and 99% of the time it works for me.
Thus, from reply #1
La Niña
It didn't show up. Nice person is trying to instruct me, but it's complete gibberish to me, so... 
