Yeah but .. we didn't used to have much of an air quailty issue - when the wind stopped blowing - like we have now; nowadays, all the outlying suburbs around Dallas are populated, with man-planted, deciduous, fast-gowing trees like Maples et al; net result, if this article is true, additional emmissions into the atmosphere ...
The 'trees' that uses to inhabit the plains here in Tejas were much more protective of the water the would allow to 'evolve' from their leaves, not so with most of the varieties that are planted now ... the natural trees growing in this area have to be darned near desert varieties, given some of the droughts I've seen ...
Depends on what you mean by "this area". I was looking up average annual rainfall for Texas cities yesterday, to see if my new location is drier or wetter than my current one (somewhat wetter). Sherman gets just over 49 inches per year. The second or third year I lived there we had over 60 inches, which is rain forest level. Dallas is at about 36 inches per year, IIRC. San Antonio only about 22.