Weather Fears Of A "Return Of The 1930s Dust Bowl" Rise As Record Drought Sizzles Southwest

[marsh]

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Fears Of A "Return Of The 1930s Dust Bowl" Rise As Record Drought Sizzles Southwest

WEDNESDAY, MAR 10, 2021 - 9:07
The United States Drought Monitor publishes weekly data that shows the Western U.S. is in a historic drought.

The latest Drought Monitor map shows for Mar. 4, "Dry conditions dominated much of the West and especially the Southwest and into the Plains."

Extreme to exceptional drought conditions are seen across 57% and 90% of the land in Colorado, New Mexico, Nevada, Utah, and Arizona, and diminishing snowpack could jeopardize drinking water for tens of millions of people from Denver to Los Angeles.


The drought developed last summer following a dry spring. Since then, conditions have deteriorated and continue to worsen to "the most severe on record in the Southwest," according to WSJ.

Utah and Nevada recorded their driest years in more than 126 years in 2020, while Arizona and Colorado had their second driest and New Mexico its fourth. The Southwest, plagued with "severe," "extreme," and "exceptional" drought conditions, suggests similarities to the Great Depression's Dust Bowl of the 1930s (read: "Return Of The Dust Bowl? The "Megadrought" In The Southwest Is Really Starting To Escalate").

"Nearly a quarter of the area was in the worst drought category, an event with a probability frequency of once every 50 to 100 years," according to WaPo.

Gary Esslinger, treasurer-manager of the district in Las Cruces, New Mexico, told WSJ that his area's conditions are absolutely "horrific." He said at least 33% of the 6,500 farmers in his region had taken offline 90,640 irrigable acres out of production from previous drought years.

New Mexico State Engineer John D'Antonio Jr. has requested farmers not to plant this year due to dangerously low levels at the state's reservoirs.

Meteorologists at private weather forecaster BAWMX show no sign of relief for the Southwest in terms of precipitation for the next two weeks.



Meanwhile, Utah rancher Jimmie Hughes told WSJ that he and his workers haul tanks of water across their ranch to refill watering holes for more than 300 cows.
Source: WSJ

"It's just a daily grind, we're not making any money," Hughes said.
Source: WSJ

He also said many of his watering holes are bone dry.
Source: WSJ

Reservoir levels across the Southwest have been dropping over the last year. The biggest, Lake Mead, an artificial lake that lies on the Colorado River, about 24 miles from the Las Vegas Strip, is only 41% full.

Lake Mead supplies about 90% of the water for Las Vegas and if levels dropped further could endanger water supplies for put to 43 million Americans. We noted back in 2014 water levels in the reservoir dropped to their lowest levels since the Hoover Dam was constructed in the 1930s.



At the time we told readers to "get there now, watch the fountains, drink the water, swim in the lake... (and sell your house)" as the water Lake Mead is "screwed."


Making matters worse, the Southwest region is experiencing a booming population as people flee West Coast cities and other metro areas full of violent crime.

The Southwest drought crisis could be a familiar one, not seen since the 1930s.
There's just one looming question: With irrigable acres taken offline and crop loss, does this mean food inflation will continue to surge?

Besdies that, government-mandated water cuts to millions of users could be next...

 

[packyderms_wife]

We're under a red flag/fire warning for the second time since this past weekend here in Iowa, today it even includes my county.

Of course the mental midgets will be screaming man made global climate change. Never mind that the Suns output is very low right now and that volcano in eastern Russia has been belching out huge amounts of ash for the past two years.

Throw in the magnetic anomaly in the south atlantic and all sorts of weird stuff is going to happen.

 

[marsh]

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What Will The Western Half Of The US Look Like During "The Second Dust Bowl"?

WEDNESDAY, APR 07, 2021 - 04:40 PM
Authored by Michael Snyder via TheMostImportantNews.com,

Scientists have begun using the term “megadrought” to describe the multi-year drought that has been plaguing the western half of the country, and now we are being told that it looks like 2021 will be the worst year of this “megadrought” so far by a wide margin. That is extremely troubling news, because major water reservoirs have already dropped to dangerously low levels, some farmers have been told that they will not be allowed to use any water at all this year, and the dust storms in the western U.S. are becoming so large that they can actually be seen from space. This is a major national crisis, and it is only going to get worse.


As you can see from the latest U.S. Drought Monitor map, nearly the entire western half of the nation is experiencing some level of drought at this moment.

But even more alarming is the fact that much of that territory is currently in one of the three most serious levels of drought…

A year ago, about 4% of the West was in a severe drought. Now, about 58% of the West is classified as being in a severe, extreme or exceptional drought.

As conditions just get drier and drier, many farmers have become deeply concerned about what that will mean for growing season in 2021.

New Mexico is right in the heart of “the second Dust Bowl”, and chile farmer Glen Duggins is bracing for a very difficult year…

The Rio Grande is expected to be in extreme drought this year, creating tough conditions for local farmers and putting New Mexico‘s beloved chile in danger. “It’s gonna be a tough year because we are out of water,” said Glen Duggins, a chile farmer out in Socorro County.

When he says that they are “out of water”, he is not exaggerating.
It is only early April, and the largest reservoir in the entire state “stands at less than 11% capacity”…

Along the Rio Grande, New Mexico’s largest reservoir stands at less than 11% capacity, meaning the irrigation season for farmers in the southern part of the state will likely start late and include only small allotments.

Farther north, managers with the Middle Rio Grande Conservancy District are in a position not seen in decades. There’s no extra water in the reservoirs, and interstate water-sharing agreements are restricting storage and releases from upstream reservoirs because New Mexico has fallen short of what it owes Texas.

Other prominent reservoirs are already dangerously low as well.
In fact, it is being projected that Lake Mead and Lake Powell are both headed for record lows…

The country’s two largest reservoirs are both headed for record lows. The last time Lake Mead reached a record low level was in 2016. The latest projections from the federal Bureau of Reclamation show Mead could fall below that mark as soon as July. Lake Powell is now just 36% full, and estimates show it could decline to a record low around March 2022.

Officials are telling us that they are doing everything that they can to conserve water, but if current trends continue it is just a matter of time before draconian restrictions start to be instituted.

Further west, the state of California also appears to be heading toward a major water crisis…

On Thursday, the unofficial end of California’s wet season, officials announced that the accumulation of snow in the Sierra Nevada mountains and the Cascades was about 40% below average levels. The state doesn’t have enough snow and rain banked to replenish its groundwater supplies, feed its rivers and streams or fill depleted reservoirs.

“It’s not just that we’re anticipating a dry year, it’s that this is our second extremely dry year, in a row,” said Daniel Swain, a climate scientist at the University of California Los Angeles and the Nature Conservancy. California – along with much of the US west – is parched, Swain added, and should brace for water cuts and arid conditions that could trigger more destructive wildfires.

We have seen droughts in California before, but this one is shaping up to be really, really bad.

At this point, we are being told that “agricultural customers south of California’s delta” will not be allowed to receive any water at all this year…

Already, the California department of water resources has announced major cuts to the reservoirs and aqueducts that supply farms and cities. The Federal Bureau of Reclamation, which delivers water to farms up and down the state’s Central Valley, said agricultural customers south of California’s delta, which feeds into the San Francisco Bay, will not be getting any water this year. And some localities, including Marin county, north of the San Francisco Bay, have asked residents to voluntarily cut back on their water use.

If you are a farmer, how are you supposed to operate a farm if you are not allowed to have any water?

Remember, this is just early April.
As temperatures rise and conditions get even drier, things will only get even crazier during the summer months.

I have been warning about the return of dust bowl conditions for a very long time, and at first a lot of people didn’t take me seriously.

But now things are so bad that nobody can ignore what is taking place.

When people think back to the original Dust Bowl, what comes to mind more than anything else are the giant dust storms that would race across the middle of the country.

Well, it is starting to happen again, and some of the dust storms are so big that they can actually be seen from space…

A line of strong storms kicked up an enormous amount of dust in eastern New Mexico and West Texas Monday afternoon. So much so, it could be seen from satellite.

A Dust Storm Warning was issued for Lubbock and the surrounding counties Monday evening due to damaging wind gusts in excess of 60+ mph and near-zero visibility due to blowing dust.

The days of “the second Dust Bowl” are here, and they are going to be quite bitter.

Yes, our technology may be a lot more advanced now, but we remain exceedingly dependent on our water resources.

Those resources are going to continue to dwindle in the western half of the country, and that is going to force some extremely difficult decisions to be made in the months and years ahead.

 

[20Gauge]

I lived in the SW for nearly 30 years.

In the entire time, I can count the years where there was what they called "normal" rainfall on one hand.

I did a few college classes where they said the entire SW was designed to be dry and burn at least once or twice a decade.

Lack of rainfall at that time (when I was in college) was considered more the norm. That seems to have changed later on.

It was why they built the giant canals to move the water, then the nature lovers got involved. No more water infrastructure.

 

[20Gauge]

Question for those who study weather.

Was that (1930s) when the giant strong hurricanes kept hitting the USA?

 

[packyderms_wife]

Isn't Lake Powell also down water table wise? I know when I went over the bridge at Lake Saylorville, just north of Des Moines, last month the water was very low.

 

[packyderms_wife]

Question for those who study weather.

Was that (1930s) when the giant strong hurricanes kept hitting the USA?

1920s into the 1930s. There were some major volcanic eruptions during that time frame as well. Part of what's happening out west is due to the volcanic eruption in eastern Russia, it belched out quite a bit of ash, and it went pretty high up, several times in the past two years. And then there's the magnetic anomaly in the south Atlantic that's putting pressure on that conveyer belt system that drives the jet stream through the gulf of mexico.

 

[20Gauge]

1920s into the 1930s. There were some major volcanic eruptions during that time frame as well. Part of what's happening out west is due to the volcanic eruption in eastern Russia, it belched out quite a bit of ash, and it went pretty high up, several times in the past two years. And then there's the magnetic anomaly in the south Atlantic that's putting pressure on that conveyer belt system that drives the jet stream through the gulf of mexico.

Question:

Are you expecting a repeat of the 1930s weather wise? Hurricanes, etc???

 

[packyderms_wife]

Question:

Are you expecting a repeat of the 1930s weather wise? Hurricanes, etc???

Yep, it's called a climate pattern, google it, the dust bowl climate pattern it took place over a thirty year time frame more or less. We have a spurt at the local university who has been talking about this event happening for several years now, and he doesn't buy into the climate change bs either. this pattern should last at least another ten to twenty years.

 

[Bps1691]

Just think of the opportunities for the demon-craps if in power and this comes down as predicted
... fits perfectly their great mantra of 'Never let a crisis go to waste"

Gives the new Great State of America perfect excuse to take over control of all water sources in the red states of the USA, so they can truck water into the drought areas.

Jobs-jobs-jobs ... more control-control-control over their opponents #1 life need

Since they choose to subsidize wind and solar and waste billions on Obama and now Joe's green energy, how soon will they spend trillions to build desalinization plants all along the coast of Southern California to take care of their leading state of communism?

More jobs-jobs-jobs and the chance to enrich the connected for billions if not trillions and have even greater control over their deep blue base

 

[hiwall]

The west has been in drought for about thirty years. I think it is getting worse.
The trouble with the drought report is that if a place gets one good rain they say the drought is over - when its not.

 

[Slydersan]

There was some professor that has a website and does weather service of some kind that predicts long range forecasts - like 20 to 30 years out. He used to be on radio shows like Coast-to-Coast and others like it. He has been saying for over 10 years that another Extreme Drought/Dustbowl was coming, starting in the southwest and eventually moving into the middle of the country: Iowa, Oklahoma, Nebraska, etc. I don't have his name or website here at work. I think I have it saved at home. I'll look for it later and if I find it, I'll post it.

 

[packyderms_wife]

I'm watching Market to Market right now on PBS, they're talking about the drought in the Dakotas and how this is going to affect crops, due to it being to dry to plant right now. I'll post the transcript in a bit in a new thread, they also discuss the drought in Brazil and Central America.

 

[marsh]

Zerohedge

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Farmers Warn That The Megadrought In The Western US Threatens To Cause Devastating Crop Failures In 2021

TUESDAY, APR 20, 2021 - 06:45 PM
Authored by Michael Snyder via The Economic Collapse blog,

Throughout U.S. history, there have always been droughts in the western half of the country from time to time, but what we are dealing with now is truly alarming. Scientists tell us that a multi-year “megadrought” has developed in the southwestern portion of the country, and this is the worst year of that “megadrought” so far by a wide margin. If conditions do not radically improve soon, we are going to have a major agricultural disaster on our hands. Some farmers have already decided not to plant crops at all this year, but many others have decided to plant anyway knowing that if enough rain doesn’t come their crops will certainly fail.



As I have discussed previously, the epicenter of this “megadrought” is the Four Corners region in the Southwest, but this drought is so immense it is even causing immense nightmares for farmers as far away as North Dakota.
In fact, the first few months of this year were the driest that North Dakota has seen in 126 years…

The period of January to March 2021 was the driest in 126 years for North Dakota. Farmers are starting to make difficult decisions on planting and culling herds as the governor of the state declared a statewide drought disaster on April 8. Soil moistures across the state, particularly in western portions of North Dakota, are lacking sufficient moisture to sustain normal crop development growth. The first eight days of April 2021 offered little help as hot, summer-like temperatures, gusty winds, and low humidity across the state accelerated drying conditions.

According to the U.S. Drought Monitor, well over half the state is now experiencing “severe drought”.

Perhaps you don’t care about what is happening in North Dakota, but you should, because much of the wheat that we use for pasta and flour comes from that region…

Things are dry and dusty in the Upper Midwest, the Northern Plains states and the Prairie provinces of Canada.

This region, spanning states such as North Dakota and provinces such as Manitoba, is the most important one for spring wheat, the higher-gluten variety that’s used for pasta or mixed with other wheat for all-purpose flour. And that crop is at significant risk, because conditions in the region are pretty dire this year.

In a previous article I discussed the dramatic rise in food prices that we have been witnessing lately, and now drought fears are pushing futures prices for spring wheat quite a bit higher…

The US Drought Monitor shows around 70 percent of North Dakota in “extreme drought” conditions, with most of the rest in the slightly less scary “severe drought” rating. As a result, the futures prices of both spring wheat and canola are at their highest in years, with traders expecting a lower harvest this year.

Despite all of our advanced technology, farmers can’t grow crops if it doesn’t rain, and a farmer in Texas named Blake Fennell says that his farm has not had any significant rain in almost two years…

The West Texas farmer says his area hasn’t seen significant rain fall in nearly two years.

“We’ve still got to give that crop every chance we think we can get, but at the same time, we also can’t waste a lot of money on a crop that we don’t think we’re going to have going into it,” he says.

What a nightmare.

Right now, nearly the entire state of Texas is in some level of drought, and we haven’t even gotten to the summer months yet.

To call this a “plague” would be a major understatement. On the border of Oregon and California, farmers just learned that water levels are so low that they will only get “a tiny fraction of the water they need” in 2021…

Hundreds of farmers who rely on a massive irrigation project that spans the Oregon-California border learned Wednesday they will get a tiny fraction of the water they need amid the worst drought in decades, as federal regulators attempt to balance the needs of agriculture against federally threatened and endangered fish species that are central to the heritage of several tribes.

Oregon’s governor said the prolonged drought in the region has the “full attention of our offices,” and she is working with congressional delegates, the White House and federal agencies to find relief for those affected.

Do you think that you could run a successful farm under such conditions?

Elsewhere in California, water allocation reductions of up to 95 percent are forcing many farmers to make some exceedingly heartbreaking decisions…

Drought conditions are already forcing Valley farmers to make difficult decisions when it comes to their crops as many are facing severe water restrictions.

“There’s districts throughout California that have experienced up to 95% reductions in water,” says Fresno County Farm Bureau CEO Ryan Jacobsen.

U.S. food production will be down in 2021, but if sufficient rain starts falling in the western U.S. we could still see a miracle.

But if enough rain does not fall, we are going to see epic crop failures.

Meanwhile, it is being projected that the drought will cause the water level in Lake Mead to soon fall to the lowest level ever recorded…

Wracked by drought, climate change and overuse, a key reservoir on the Colorado River could sink to historically low levels later this year, new US government projections show, potentially triggering significant water cutbacks in some states as early as next year.

The projections released by the US Bureau of Reclamation show that Lake Mead — the largest reservoir in the country and a vital water supply to millions across the Southwest — could fall later this year to its lowest levels since it was filled in the 1930s.

If you live anywhere in the western half of the country, you should brace yourself for severe water restrictions.

And all of us need to brace ourselves for much higher prices at the grocery store.
For decades, the western half of the country was blessed with unusually high levels of rainfall, but that wasn’t going to last forever.

Now Dust Bowl conditions have returned, and farmers, ranchers and local authorities are starting to panic.

As this megadrought continues to intensify, life is going to dramatically change in the western half of the nation, and that is going to deeply affect all of us.

 

[Scrapman]

The sad part is we no longer have the leadership or brain trust to prepare for the future. We are up shits creek. A good example is the shipping container backup going on on the west coast.