Posted on 03/21/2013 2:44:12 PM PDT by EBH
The United States is in the midst of one of the biggest droughts in recent memory. At last count, over half of the lower 48 states had abnormally dry conditions and are suffering from at least moderate drought....
...U.S. Department of Agriculture meteorologist and Drought Monitor team member, Brad Rippey, explained that when the drought began in 2012, the worst of the conditions were much farther east, in states like Indiana, Ohio, and Michigan — the corn belt states. Based on pre-drought estimates, corn used for grain lost slightly more than a quarter of its potential. By the Summer of 2012, 59% of U.S. rangeland and pastureland was rated by the USDA as being in poor or very poor condition. The growing drought decimated national hay production, causing feed shortages, which in turn drove up prices in livestock.
By the fall of 2012, drought conditions continued to expand westward to its current epicenter — states like Nebraska, Kansas, Colorado and Oklahoma. Rippey explained that most worrying is the drought’s effects on the winter wheat crop, which is one of the biggest crops grown in the U.S., and which is grown almost entirely in the states in severe drought. While the region has had some precipitation recently, “winter wheat crop will need ideal conditions heading through the next few weeks just to break even. Rippey said....
In addition to severe drought conditions, relatively large areas in the worst-off states are in “exceptional” drought, which the USDA identifies as “exceptional and widespread crop/pasture losses, shortages of water in reservoirs, streams, and wells creating water emergencies.” More than 70% of Nebraska is currently classified as being in a state of “exceptional drought,” which includes Exceptional and widespread crop/pasture losses; shortages of water in reservoirs, streams, and wells creating water emergencies....
(Excerpt) Read more at rr.com ...
That definitely is Wyoming. We just had a horrible wind storm last week. 60 mph gusts at our place, 70 + mph along I-25. They had to close the hiwy just west of us because of blowing dirt...a dirt blizzard. Can’t imagine what it would have been like in the 30’s. to go through that weekly, yearly.
My MIL’s ranch has been in the family for about 120 years. There were times when they almost lost it and in the ‘30s were picking prickly pear and burning off the thorns to feed to the cattle.
For many years they dairy steers that you could almost get for free on goats. They also had attractions for dudes, like rattlesnakes, yuk.
It just doesn’t really flood here, flash floods, yes but not overall floods.
Is 1000 years ago “recent”?
“During medieval times 800 to 1,000 years ago, however, the region was a swirling desert, far worse than the Dust Bowl of the 1930s. “
Bush’s fault.
On my fields, I can generally count on receiving about 1 Million gallons of rainfall per acre, per year. Even at 200 bushels of corn per acre, that comes out to 5,000 gallons of water available to grow each bushel of corn (and each bushel of corn will, in turn, yield more than 2.8 gallons of ethanol). Even so, corn which is used as ethanol feedstock, is still available as animal feed. Only the starch is removed, ruminants don't benefit all that much from the starch in corn anyway, and nobody really suggests that the average American needs all that much more corn sugar in his diet.
The fact is that the rain which falls on my land is mine. If I want to use it to grow corn, that's my business. If someone else wants to use his water to have a nice big pretty yard, and not produce a damned thing of value, that would be his business.
What's wrong with fuel ethanol in the US isn't that corn uses too much water, it's that the central government has chosen to screw with the market (the same thing that's wrong with electric cars, passenger trains, letter delivery, education, medical care, ad infinitum).
Michigan running out of water? Only if our lakes the size of seas get diverted.....
Most droughts in Texas are followed by flash floods, usually when a hurricane hits the coast but sometimes just because it starts raining again and doesn't stop.
What I said about corn and ethanol might not apply to you, if you’re growing the crop without irrigation. However, it does apply to drawing down aquifers.
I agree with your point about government interference in the market. If corn ethanol had to compete in a market free of mandates and (perhaps) subsidies — how much corn would be grown to convert to ethanol. In the midst of a drought, wouldn’t water be worth too much to waste on growing a crop for fuel — especially where there is no net energy savings?
Obviously, you know the circumstances on your farm better than anyone; and I do empathize with your plight (regarding the drought). I hope it all turns around soon.
Thank you! The link I posted was to a drought forecast instead of current conditions. That’s why it looks different. It’s good to have access to both, for me. Holding off on getting yaks here, until hay will more likely be easier to get (over 9,000 ft. elev., normally dryer than most places with little growth, sometimes heavy ice cover sprayed from nearby peaks in winter). Thanks again.
if they can figure out a way to commercially use the salt rather than returning it to sea — the time it would take to get these things online would diminish substantially.
Heck they use every part of the pig but the oink. Why not salt? Seems to me there are plenty of thing could be done by slicing and dicing NaCl — especially if you threw in some CO2
hell, sounds good to me!
Been in the Midwest since 1948. The 50s were grim. But my ancestors left Texas and moved to Oklahoma (Indian Territory) in the 1880s because of the draught in northern Texas.
Haven't seen dust storms like we had in Northern Oklahoma back in the fifties. The older folks said it was just like the thirties.
Days on end...dust everywhere, on every surface, inside the house...which was closed up tight.
Damn, you could taste the stuff...
I've been in dust storms since, but they tend to be once every few years or so. And nothing like the ones of sixty years ago.
Remember when the drought finally broke. Lord, Eastern Kansas went under water. Trains were stranded on embankments for days.
There was a tornado in Dallas when we lived there. I saw it. I still see it in nightmares. People said it broke the draught.
Sometimes there are variations.
It's pretty clear a cycle like that has to be related to regular energy cycles in the Sun.
The earliest serious European settlement in North America started toward the end of one such cycle ~ and never really got going until as late as 1621 when you had several near simultaneous successful attempts in Cape Cod, New York, Virginia, and Florida.
All the Great Droughts are followed by a recovery that involves rain and reintroduction of extensive grasslands ~ which bring about a population peak for rodents of all sorts ~ and with them fleas ~ and with them the arrival of hanta virus and widespread death among the humans who survived the previous 80 years of drought.
This can take a bit of time. If we date the end of the Great Drought that started in the 16th century (in North America) as being at that 1621 date, then we note the widespread death of the Indians in the fall and winter of 1648, that gives us a lag time of more than 25 years ~ or roughly a complete solar cycle (two 11 to 13 year periods marked by sunspot frequency).
The ends of two great drought cycles after 1621 land at 1701, 1782, and 1863 ~ then 1944/45 (with starvation by famine in Europe for the first time since back in the 1840s). ~ The end of a Great Drought cycle is always related to some sort of significant historic event ~ extensive settlement in America, War of Spanish Sucession, American Revolution/French Revolution, Civil War, end of WWII, and whatever happens in 2125!
Bad as last year's drought was, we may have a good 10 to 12 more years of this, with each year worse than the last.
The good news is the development of some new filtering materials that work effectively to clean salt out of water. Now, to pump that stuff uphill to the Great Plains.
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