An article in Monday’s New York Times paints a vivid picture of the drought that has spread across 14 states. Grass is dying, and some farmers are selling cattle they can no longer afford to feed. In parts of Texas—almost all of which has been affected—deposits of salts and other chemicals on power lines, which in usual times would be washed away by the rain, are building up, triggering power surges and leading to blackouts. Corn and cotton crops are suffering. In Georgia, endangered freshwater mussels are in further trouble as the creek they live in runs low.
A NOAA official blames a strong La Niña weather pattern. Some are comparing this year’s drought to the one that hit the US in the 1950s—or even to the Dust Bowl of the ’30s.
Dust—and the Dust Bowl—have been on our minds here lately. Just last week, as we were watching the dust storm that swept through Phoenix (a spectacular photo of which will appear on the cover of our July/August issue, which was just going to press as the storm hit), another editor here at Forester recommended a book that I’d overlooked, although it won a National Book Award several years ago: Timothy Egan’s The Worst Hard Time: The Untold Story of Those Who Survived the Great American Dust Bowl. Egan’s book chronicles both the causes of the ecological disaster on the Great Plains—primarily overfarming that the land couldn’t support—as well as individual stories of people who lived through that era.
As Egan recounts, investors in the land tried to attract settlers to the area, and newcomers who were dubious about their odds of successfully farming in a place that received less than 20 inches of rain a year were advised to “use dust for mulch; it will hold the ground in place and keep evaporation down.” A popular manual of the time advised that the act of plowing itself would cause sufficient atmospheric disturbance to increase the amount of rain.
We’ve come quite a way since then, but the problem of not having enough rain still periodically plagues us. If you are in an area that’s affected by the current drought—especially if you’re carrying out erosion and sediment control work under these less-than-ideal conditions—tell us about it in the comments.