TX State Climatologist - Current Drought Could Endure For Better Part Of A Decade - Reuters

[hatrack]

A devastating Texas drought that has browned city lawns and caused more than $5 billion in damages to the state's farmers and ranchers could continue for another nine years, a state forecaster said on Thursday. "It is possible that we could be looking at another of these multiyear droughts like we saw in the 1950s, and like the tree rings have shown that the state has experienced over the last several centuries," State Climatologist John Nielson-Gammon told Reuters.

Some 95 percent of the state is listed as being in either "severe" or "exceptional" drought by the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Drought Monitor, and Nielson-Gammon said the last 12 months have been the driest one-year period on record in the Lone Star State. The state's worst recorded drought lasted from 1950 through 1957 and prompted the creation of artificial lakes all across Texas to supply water to a state that at the time had a population of 15 million - a whopping 10 million fewer than today.

The long-term weather patterns, including La Nina currents in the oceans, mirror records from the early 1950s, Nielsen-Gammon said. The current drought, which he said began in earnest in 2005, could wind up being a 15-year stretch if patterns hold, he said.

"We're very lucky that we had 2007 and 2010, which were years of plentiful rain," he said. "2010 was the wettest year in record. Were it not for last year, we would be in much worse shape even than we are today."

EDIT

http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/09/29/us-drought-texas-idUSTRE78S6J520110929

[TheWraith]

1. So at what point do we evacuate Texas?

No, I'm not joking.

[NickB79]

2. Climate refugees in our own backyard

It does raise some troubling questions.

-If they have nothing left of value (home is worthless, no job, no savings), with what money do they move and start a new life? I wouldn't count on the US government being able to provide much at this point.

-Where do we send them? Will we see massive FEMA camps set up in California, or up here in the Midwest?

[phantom power]

3. My guess is the tipping point is when they can no longer run the thermal power plants.

[jwirr]

4. My guess is that the economy will determine that. As more and more

go broke they will take up the Oakie idea and pack it in. The real question is what are we going to do with all of them in states that already have economic problems?

[Terry in Austin]

5. 10 million of 'em, anyway

I remember the '50's drought, and it just sort of seemed normal, except you had to drive a ways to get to the water at my grampa's nominally lakeside cabin. I don't remember any rationing or people being stingy with the lawn sprinklers.

Air conditioning was fairly rare -- paperweights on office desks were functional items. Hey, you just got used to it. You stayed skinny and everybody else slowed down about the same as you, so it didn't much matter if all you could do was cope with the heat.

Then came AC, and then came the non-natives who thought the place might actually be inhabitable. They'll have some decisions to make when energy per capita plummets in the next few years, and with it, the custom of refrigerating your entire indoor environment.

I think it's probably a toss-up about which will be first to drive the exodus, scarce water or excess heat. But they'll be leaving the place pretty much as they found it, so I'm also sure there'll be a cussed few that stick around -- they already know that the landlord prefers to live in hell and rent this place out.

:evilgrin: