[PA Engineer]

I am of the school that in this modern era famine is affected more due to man made conditions (case in point: Zimbabwe) than natural phenomena.

I agree with you and would normally blame famine on political disruption, however other factors are in play. The media has been somewhat silent on the drought situation in the US. There was a recent blurb about winter wheat but very little else. The following drought map links to the US Drought Monitor web site. The 12 week animation is a bit unnerving and can be found at the link under the map.



2013 is continuing to develop into an interesting year.

[PA Engineer]

The 12 week drought map is an improvement over the previous summer and spring.

[Ellendra]

That’s why I keep praying for snow, even though most folks around here are praying for no snow.

I’ve noticed that the amount of snow in winter tends to indicate the amount of rain we’ll get the following summer. Thus, the winter we had 100+inches of heavy, wet snow was followed by a summer of floods, and it was so rainy that people were surfing down the sidewalks in some places. Last winter we had very little snow, with some areas going weeks at a time without any. As expected, we then had record droughts, with some places going weeks at a time between rainfalls.

19 inches predicted from this next storm. Hurray for snow!

[Tench_Coxe]

Do you have a link on the winter wheat? Based on that map, it seems stupid to have the EPA demanding more ethanol in gasoline (I won’t even get into the risk on engines that aren’t built to handle the increased mixture). If the barge traffic is affected this coming year, I’ll bet Warren Buffett is poised to make a fortune on his railroads shipping stuff.