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More than sixty percent of the United States is experiencing drought conditions
- ericpauley 5mo agoTitle is somewhat incorrect: more than 60% of the U.S. is facing drought, making it overall the worst in decades. The data do not show that the drought in each area is the worst in decades.
- hyperrail 5mo agoThe drought map used here is partly subjective opinion. https://droughtmonitor.unl.edu/About/WhatistheUSDM.aspx https://droughtmonitor.unl.edu/About/WhatistheUSDM.aspx > Who draws the map? > Meteorologists and climatologists from the NDMC, NOAA and USDA take turns as the lead author of the map, usually two weeks a time. The author’s job is to do something that a computer can’t. When the data is pointing in different directions, they make sense out of it. > How do we know when we're in a drought? > No single piece of evidence tells the full story, and neither do strictly physical indicators. That’s why the USDM isn’t a statistical model
- lelandfe 5mo agoAnd a lot of hard work, sounds like: https://droughtmonitor.unl.edu/About/AbouttheData/DroughtClassification.aspx https://droughtmonitor.unl.edu/About/AbouttheData/DroughtCla... > [Authors] bring together the physical climate, weather and hydrology data and reconcile that with local expert feedback, impact reports and conditions observations. The author is also responsible for weighing different indicators based on what’s most appropriate for a particular place and time of year. In the West, for example, winter snowpack has a stronger bearing on water supplies than in the East
- HerbManic 5mo agoIt also sounds like that old adage of - All models are wrong but some are useful. Alas, we probably only know how useful they where afterwards.
- hyperrail 5mo agoDoesn't seem like all climate scientists are fans of it either. From a 2022 critique of a news story also based on this map: https://cliffmass.blogspot.com/2022/04/is-large-portion-of-washington-state-in.html https://cliffmass.blogspot.com/2022/04/is-large-portion-of-w... > The essential message is that weather and climate data do not support the claims of extreme or severe drought in eastern Washington this year. > There is no expectation of water problems over or near the Columbia Basin. The Drought Monitor graphics, which are created subjectively, are sufficiently problematic and deficient that they should not be considered or applied to any serious decision making.
- mc32 5mo agoI like the map. It's usually on track but sometimes it's quite a bit off. I've seen it say drought when it's been wet --maybe just not as wet as usual. It also doesn't indicate when above average and I do not think it averages precip out when a wet week was extremely wet and the next one dry. It'll say it was dry last week. In other words you could have cumulative average precip but it's only counting last week's precipitation.
- devindotcom 5mo agocliff is an expert but also famously sort of a "climate contrarian" and his takes are regularly cited by climate skeptics and conservative irritants here in the PNW. just noting his takes don't exist in a vacuum.
- timr 5mo agoSo? You’re trying to engage in tu quoque without saying it explicitly. If you think the argument is wrong, make a counter-argument. Don’t just say that the arguer hangs out with people you don’t like. Cliff in an expert, he worked in the Obama administration on climate, and unsurprisingly, he is being cited for having opinions the support the thesis of the article.
- devindotcom 5mo agoah.. a fallacy guy. there should be a named fallacy for mischaracterizing remarks so they fit the form of a fallacy, in order to clothe one's argument in an illusory erudition. anyway if anything it would probably be poisoning the well. really though it's just pointing out that cliff isn't a garden variety climate scientist and comes with something like a warning label.
- devindotcom 5mo agoi think calling it "subjective opinion" is kind of disingenuous. it is a subject matter expert interpreting the data. there is a vast gulf between that and someone else simply offering their opinion on the matter.
- Theodores 5mo agoI worked in weather for TV as a technician and I was lucky enough to work with meteorologists. I thought they were high priests in the church of science, however, I detected a gambling mentality going on. I was just surprised at how subjective their work was, with differing opinions regarding the big picture depending on whom you asked and what their background was, as in university, whether they had worked for the navy or whether they had worked for the government. The big surprise of the gambling mentality reminded me of people that dedicate their lives to losing as much money as possible betting on horses. These people know the form, the weather and so much, yet they do their own bets. It was kind of the same when working out what the weather would be in Springfield tomorrow. Would it just be cloudy or actual rain? That would be a 'bet'. The next day the observations would come in and the meteorologists would either win or lose their 'bet'. The guy who has been to Springfield and knows the local geography well would have his own reasons for his 'bet', whereas the guy who was more interested in long term storm development would have another rationale for his 'bet'. Then there would be 'wrong all the time me', able to look at the low level cloud from contrails (which are really huge in some wavelengths on the satellite pictures) to assume rain every day. Hence climate and weather is highly subjective even if it is highly educated and vastly experienced professionals that are interpreting the data.
- HerbManic 5mo agoThere is also the additional issue of computer models constantly chasing global changes. About 10-15 years back I used to talk with folks that worked on weather modeling and they were in a state of frustration in that as soon as they could make models that could work on older data sets to do reasonable predictions, the global weather patterns had change just subtly enough that it made them just kind of average on forward predictions. This was right before GPU compute started to become a big thing, I do wonder if they now use machine learning models on these to speed up model iteration? I would hope so, but even then there is the human factor as you said. Eventually someone has to make the call on what the data shows and how to present it to the world.
- eclectician 5mo agoIt is, and the subjective assessment component is a black box. That said, the USDM has many other components that are objective, so it's far from being a subjective measure -- I would argue that the Fed Funds rate, for instance, is determined far more subjectively. Also, there just isn't a more objective measure of drought out there, let alone a fully objective measure. Also also, it's unclear to me that this black box is being gamed any harder than most other black boxes in our system. If you want to game agriculture, you game the farm bill.
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- colechristensen 5mo agoIn California during their droughts restaurants wouldn't give you a glass of water unless you asked for it. Maybe there's some compromise between that and pumping groundwater for datacenter cooling. Plenty of places are using water faster than the aquifers they use regenerate. I hold no issue with banning using that limited freshwater resource for cooling.
- doodlebugging 5mo agoDrought in Texas also makes icewater one of those things you need to request if you are ordering another drink. When I was a kid, restaurants routinely filled glasses for everyone with ice water so they could cool down as they waited to order and eat. Pitchers of water on the table were pretty standard. Today it is not common to find water pitchers on tables and in most places you will need to order a glass of water. Granted I may not be the local expert on this any more since I have cut way back on restaurant visits over the last 6-8 years. >Plenty of places are using water faster than the aquifers they use regenerate. I thought I would split this since it can be a pretty deep subject. When I was in college in the 1980's (geoscience), one of the country's largest aquifers (Ogallala) was in the news all the time. The story was that at the rate they were pumping there would only be 25-30 years of water left in the reservoir. Recharge rates were too slow and the recharge zone was too far west. Late in the 90's T Boone Pickens fired the first real shots in the water wars by negotiating water rights over a large portion of the Ogallala aquifer building a water empire. Part of his plan was to pipeline water to N Texas cities that were running short of water, a consequence of their own failure to look far enough into the future to construct reservoirs and to upgrade systems and to manage supplies so that overuse was disincentivized. The pipelines were never built. Reservoirs are still difficult to construct. N Texas has an even more onerous problem with population growth outstripping supplies. Meanwhile, the Ogallala still has about 25-30 years before it is pumped dry. It isn't that the targets were wrong, it was more that those numbers applied to the areas where pumping was the most aggressive but overall there were areas that still had significant reserves and the programs instituted that encouraged upgrading equipment and more efficient water use were successful in putting the brakes on the decline of the aquifer. I'm probably getting most of this wrong so if you know something different, I'm all ears. >I hold no issue with banning using that limited freshwater resource for cooling. In line with the whole water problem here in Texas I agree that there should be statewide bans on using freshwater sources for cooling data centers. I especially would like that ban to be extended to the oil and gas industry so that they are prohibited from using freshwater for frac fluid. Since the shale boom really got rolling here in Texas they have left a trail of dry water wells and surface water pollution from poorly cemented casing or from injection of recovered production and frac fluids into subsurface formations that have created environmental issues when the injected fluids migrate through old joints or along dormant faults, re-energizing those faults and pushing water to the surface, especially through the pincushion of abandoned wells that were never plugged by their operators. This is Texas so I expect that the industry will continue to get special treatment in Austin and since data centers are the new big thing, they will also take precedence over anything that local residents need in order to live comfortably. As a state, Texas has been rotten from the top down for a long time.
- helterskelter 5mo agoIn some places not strictly in drought the water cycle is still completely messed up. A few huge winter storms make up for lack of precipitation in the rest of the year and then promptly melts off. So the yearly average looks good on paper but it's dry as hell in summer/fire season with no snowmelt throughout the year.
- hypercube33 5mo agoAs a kid in the Midwest (Minnesota) we'd get tons of snow and it would hang around until June or July since snow is such a good insulator - the big piles wouldn't melt I mean. Last time I remembered this happening maybe was 2005. Now it snows, melts, gets cold, repeats and we don't really get any build up except maybe a big storm leaving enough for a week or two.
- maigret 5mo agoIn Europe drought is measured from the amount of water at different depths. I would be surprised it’s different in the US.
- monster_truck 5mo agoSome odd comments on this. It's not a matter of debate, wheat futures reflect this.
- colechristensen 5mo agoSome odd comments and voting patterns on a lot of things. It's getting weird around here.
- scarecrowbob 5mo agoWell, it's a weird site. Most of my interactions are through the /active page or specific search terms. When I started to do that in about 2021 it certainly made it a lot easier to find what I as curious about. Unfortunately, what I wanted to know also changed, in that I now use the site to keep tabs on the thoughts of folks are or who fund and work for hard-right technocrats. There are, of course, many other folks on the site. At the same time, the US techno-fascists both have an outsized influence on our lives and it's much harder to find their voices in other places: folks who, for instance, think Peter Thiel is of course quite sane and probably not trying to figure out a way to kill vast chunks of us off (and that it would be a reasonable thing if he were).
- lovich 5mo agoI’m not sure I understood you correctly. You think critics of Thiel are the techno fascists?
- didgetmaster 5mo agoI occasionally check out the map on the drought monitor website. The current map does not look significantly different than maps I have seen over the past 10 years. The areas of extreme drought may change each year, but the total area affected seems rather ordinary to me.
- PaulDavisThe1st 5mo agoDuration, duration, duration. The US southwest is now in the longest period of severe drought in at least 1200 years.
- bmitc 5mo agoExactly. I feel like people forget about statistics and trends when it comes to the climate. Nearly every long term trend and statistics shows climate and environmental conditions getting worse, and it's almost solely due to human activity. Cherry picking short term events isn't useful, especially when the climate getting worse often means an increase in the duration between normal events and an increase in extreme weather.
- PaulDavisThe1st 5mo agoTo be fair, the current US SW drought fits right into the "pattern" of long term periodic droughts rather than being caused by human activity. However, anthropogenic effects are likely making it worse (worth noting that the IPCC has been clear that they cannot yet see anthropogenic effects in most climate events, despite being equally clear that they are there and they are going to get worse).
- vortegne 5mo agoYou are completely wrong about the IPCC stance. Please read the AR6.
- njovin 5mo agoAnd we're still selling what little water we have to foreign & domestic corporations for a fraction of what residential citizens pay. We are also refusing to maintain critical water-system infrastructure, setting ourselves up to lose critical water storage capacity [1]. We can get fined for washing our cars at certain times (although it's rarely enforced), but nobody ever turns the screws on the business machine. [1] https://fox5sandiego.com/news/local-news/north-county/plan-for-lake-hodges-dam-in-question-after-cost-jump/ https://fox5sandiego.com/news/local-news/north-county/plan-f...
- postsantum 5mo agoI hope people will not buy into that weird conspiracy theory about the destroyed weather radars in Iraq and its consequences
- HerbManic 5mo agoI have not heard of this one but I am intrigued. Always interested to see how creative people can be in trying to fit the undefinable and uncontrollable world into a narrative box.
- deleted 5mo ago[deleted]
- mannanj 5mo agoYeah, right. Hope people won't believe that weird conspiracy theory about how the government can change weather and has had the technology for years.
- analog8374 5mo agoDry here (southern IL). 12 years ago spring would be cool, drizzly, cloudy. Now (past 3 years) it's warm, dry, sunny. Periodically we get this big wind that lasts for a couple days.
- djoldman 5mo agoJust a reminder from January: "California completely drought-free for 1st time in 25 years after winter storms" https://abc7.com/post/california-has-zero-areas-dryness-first-time-25-years-following-winter-storms/18374526/ https://abc7.com/post/california-has-zero-areas-dryness-firs...
- mlazos 5mo agoOh weird, everything must be fine then, I still see snow sometimes even!
- danans 5mo ago> "California completely drought-free for 1st time in 25 years after winter storms" California is like 5% of the land mass of the contiguous 48 states. Just because it is out of a drought doesn't negate the article.
- cjcenizal 5mo agoI think the “first time in 25 years” bit reinforces the idea of persistent drought being a problem.
- ChrisArchitect 5mo agoRelated: USDA Projects Smallest US Wheat Harvest Since 1972 Due to Plains Drought https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48134993 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48134993
- doodlebugging 5mo agoI read this article. Thanks for that link. I think it odd that they are focusing on drought conditions due to the La Nina conditions we have experienced when we are ramping up now for what has been described as a super El Nino. For much of the areas affected by the drought conditions, there will be an overabundance of precipitation by late summer into next spring. The article mentions the potential for a super El Nino at the very end but doesn't discuss the effect it could have on content in the map should it go down as modeled. I suspect that a lot of yellows and red will disappear or shift to the north. I know that the last super El Nino in 2015-2016 followed similar drought conditions due to La Nina such that rainfall at my property, which is normally ~36" (91.4 cm) annually (that's a 20 year average taken here on my property) was below average for the period 2010-2014 by 3-5" (7.62-12.7 cm) and up to 10" (25.4 cm) in 2014. Once La Nina faded it began to rain in August and rained out through December and we ended the year with 68" (172.7 cm) rainfall. In the decades that I have lived here and tracked rainfall that is the wettest year by more than 14" (35.6 cm). We are currently behind the curve here but I have faith in their predictions since it also comes with a promise of ridiculously hot temperatures to make the last months of the year humid well past normal. It has been cooler than normal so far and drier than normal (La Nina hanging on by a thread). The script will flip and N Texas will again be a miserable place to be if you work outside.
- dug4wt 5mo ago[dead]
- ffsm8 5mo agoIt's worth keeping in mind the danger of such a transition though. If you go from a drought to a lot of water it generally builds up pretty badly as dried out dirt doesn't absorb water very well. If the prediction holds true it may become a year with a lot of water damage/flooding in these regions. Let's hope for the best though.
- doodlebugging 5mo agoI agree that we should hope for the best. We should prepare for the worst too since the updated models are indicating that the super El Nino event is very likely. People across the region that will be affected can expect an unusually wet and hot end to the year. We have time to prepare. There won't be much we can do about soil absorption since keeping your yard watered will also cause runoff if the soil is saturated. We just need to follow the common sense guidance to avoid driving into flooded underpasses and do not drive past barriers. Remember that at night it will be difficult to spot flooded sections of highway due to reflections so you will be dependent on center lines and painted markings and if they disappear it could indicate water depth sufficient to obscure them. Hydroplaning is a serious concern so drive more slowly and remember that if you begin to hydroplane you need to keep your wheels pointed in the direction that you need to travel and let off of the accelerator. The pooled water and sudden decrease in speed will put your tires back on the road surface so your vehicle will zip off in the direction that it is pointing. Check your tread depth before autumn and replace your tires if they are worn. Carry a rain slicker or poncho with you in case traffic conditions force you to stop due to accidents or water across the roadway. You'll be a lot more comfortable dry than wet. I intentionally bought property with a house that is on a hill with drainage away from the house so flooding isn't something that I worry about. I know that most other people will have to deal with flooding, especially around here where there are so many new construction issues - new concrete driveways, asphalt streets, and channelized creeks. Places that have never flooded in the past could flood now due to loss of open ground to home construction. I am a couple decades into restoring my place to native prairie grasses, wildflowers, and trees so my place manages rainfall as it always has. I don't have much soil to absorb the rainfall though since I live on a limestone outcrop with poorly developed soils. I hope people around here will follow guidance and be safe and use common sense when the rains come. I'm ready with my 4x4s to drag them out of their situations if they need a hand though.
- coolfox 5mo agocomputah, build 200 more data centers
- lofaszvanitt 5mo ago"Drill, baby, drill"
- Surac 5mo agoSo that‘s „making Amerika dry again“ trump is promising?
- ashoeafoot 5mo ago[dead]
- deleted 5mo ago[deleted]
- juliusceasar 5mo agoSoon USA will bring democracy in exchange for water.
- sethammons 5mo agoI predict that we will acknowledge that tree loss and city sprawl are significant drivers of drought and there will be a massive "plant trees" campaign someday. Agriculture and city replacing trees wiped out the Mayans: https://news.climate.columbia.edu/2012/08/20/forest-razing-by-ancient-maya-worsened-droughts-says-study/ https://news.climate.columbia.edu/2012/08/20/forest-razing-b... Tree loss being a 60% contributing factor to the Mayan case. When the Mayans ran out of water, their civilization collapsed, and their technology and advanced astronomical science faded from memory. We are speed running toward the same peril in modern times.
- harrisi 5mo agoYour prediction came true decades to centuries ago, depending on where you are in the world. Urban forestry has been an important part of city planning for these (and more) reasons for quite awhile.
- sethammons 5mo agoNear Raleigh, NC, we've lost over 15% of our tree canopy this last decade. https://www.cbs17.com/news/local-news/wake-county-news/these-3-wake-county-cities-lost-the-most-trees-in-the-last-decade/ https://www.cbs17.com/news/local-news/wake-county-news/these... When I think of a real plant-a-tree project, I think of replacing tree canopies to historic levels. My prediction hasn't come true because we are still seeing net reductions in tree canopy.
- harrisi 5mo agoI see what you mean. That article makes a few things seem more dramatic than they are as far as I can tell. The report says there was a 2% reduction in canopy coverage between 2010 and 2020 for Wake county. Or 3.6%, relatively. I can't find exact numbers for Raleigh. I'm not trying to take the stance that there's no problem. I think we should spend far more resources, time, and education on the importance of nature. I was just pointing out that urban forestry has been a thing for awhile. The two unfortunate sides to it, at least if you ignore all the rest of modern infrastructure, is that one, there's only so much space you have to add more trees in urban areas, and two, it's treated more as a necessity which has a lower-bound to reach than an ongoing project to improve. So, succinctly, we should plant more trees. :) Side note: it's unfortunate that the news article doesn't link to the report, as far as I can tell. I believe it's referencing this: https://s3.us-west-1.amazonaws.com/wakegov.com.if-us-west-1/s3fs-public/documents/2023-09/Wake%20County_FINAL_pages_R_0.pdf https://s3.us-west-1.amazonaws.com/wakegov.com.if-us-west-1/...