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The drought ruining crops, shrinking water supplies and exacerbating wildfires intensified dramatically over the last week, U.S. forecasters reported Thursday.
The weekly Drought Monitor shows "widespread intensification" in the central U.S., the National Drought Mitigation Center said in a statement.
Across the contiguous U.S., the total area under all kinds of drought grew only slightly but the most severe categories -- extreme and exceptional -- rose from 13.5 percent to 20.5 percent -- the highest level since 2003.
The jump "this week was the largest since we started the U.S. Drought Monitor" 12 years ago, Brian Fuchs, a climatologist and Drought Monitor author, told NBC News. "This is really showing the rapid intensification of the drought due to the heat/dryness over the region with little relief for anyone."
"We’ve seen tremendous intensification of drought through Illinois, Iowa, Missouri, Indiana, Arkansas, Kansas and Nebraska, and into part of Wyoming and South Dakota in the last week," Fuchs said in the center's statement.
A drought is now gripping more than half of the nation, with the latest U.S. Drought Monitor showing some of the worst areas are expanding. In Tennessee, crops are dying and families are struggling to face the losses. NBC's Thanh Truong reports.
Every state had at least a small area categorized as "abnormally dry" or worse. "It’s such a broad footprint," Fuchs said.
The Weather Channel noted the jump is the equivalent of adding 219,000 square miles to the worst drought categories -- "an area slightly larger than the states of California and New York combined," it noted.
Related story: Food prices to rise next year, USDA says
States posting dramatic increases in just the last week included Illinois, which went from 8 percent in extreme/exceptional drought to 70 percent, and Nebraska, which went from 5 percent to 64 percent.
In Illinois, the drought is impacting water supplies in towns like Pontiac. "The Vermillion River does not have enough flow for us to use it as our primary source of water," one field observer reported Wednesday to the Drought Mitigation Center. "We have had to switch to a secondary source of water, located in a reservoir a few miles outside of town ... A 'dirt' like smell and taste is being noted ... We NEED rain, very soon."
The intensification also means drier soils and deteriorated pastures.
America's ongoing drought disaster is getting worse before it gets better. NBC's Chris Clackum reports.
"Over 90 percent of the topsoil was short or very short of moisture in Oklahoma, Kansas, Nebraska, Missouri, Iowa, Illinois, Indiana, and Ohio, with virtually all (99 percent) short or very short in Missouri and Illinois," the monitor stated. "Over 80 percent of the pasture and rangeland was in poor or very poor condition in Kansas, Arkansas, Missouri, Illinois, and Indiana."
A longer drought index compiled by the U.S. shows this year's drought now covers the most acreage since a dry spell in 1954. Two Dust Bowl years, 1934 and 1939, also had larger drought areas in the Palmer Drought Severity Index, which dates back to 1895 but is not as detailed as the Drought Monitor.
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Food shortages are next they say. Rising food prices and lack of water what next after that. Repent !
Agreed. The end truly is near. The U.S. is falling just like the Roman empire... a complete wasteland of abortion and homosexuality. Some people never learn, even from abundant history.
The immoral policies of our country, the greed, homosexuality, abortion all the things that offend God - we are now receiving the punishment we deserve from God - repent and return our country and its values toward God..
Have mercy on us Lord.....
It is always so sweet when the cultists find each other and speak their own little language of bigotry.
So Let's grow more fuel feedstock on the desiccated land! Our leadership put in place an idiotic policy to replace fossil fuels with less dependable biofuel made from food. This decision further depletes our irrigation water, our top soil, our diminishing phosphate supply, and adds fertilizer, herbicide, and pesticide runoff to our streams and rivers.
Vote OUT the progressives who force taxpayers to subside stupid programs.
Hell has a way of showing its ugly side sometimes. A greed driven society has only one direction---> The flow of life can not be interupted Mother Nature has a way of living on despite mankind she has eternity on her side. Laugh as you may when the easternly wind kicks up and those crows start a cacklin it will get real hot.
Yikes....I think you may be on to something. I'm moving to Kamloops.
Killing babies and calling it a "choice," condoning and rewarding homosexuality and calling it"equality" equals famine, disease and drought in the land. Deal with your new reality and your stupid choices. So it is written.
It's dumb asses like you that caused this problem. When the end times come your kind should be hunted for food.
t. you cannot deny God's laws and get away with it. Read your Bible sir!!
"your kind should be hunted for food." Wow, hate much, t.-2726352?
Well, Timothy is notoriously a little out there, but that is no reason to so viciously attack him (or eat him).
So it is written? Why don't you go play on Rick Warrens website?
Average national harvest 2011: Corn-180 to 220 Bushels p/acre - Beans-45 to 65 Bushels p/acre.
Projected average national harvest 2012: Corn-40 to 80 bushels p/acre - Beans-10 to 30 p/acre
Corn goes into 98% of our consumables including Ethanol/unleaded blend.
Beans go into 96% of our consumables including Biodiesel.
You do the math, mine says 30% - 50% increase in cost for consumables for 2013.
I have no idea where you're getting you mis-information.
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-07-24/u-s-corn-crop-forecast-13-below-usda-estimate-by-cekander-2-.html
Uhmmm what about all the grain stored in elevators from previous harvests...just saying. Oh and lots of other countries farm like Brazil. I agree an increase will happen but not near that scale.
Well, Global warming isn't real! Fossil fuels don't hurt anything! Mankind was instructed by god to kill everything in gods' garden. He will forgive us after all. It's his will! Where else would man get these idea's except from god.
We should have one last rush to hunt and extract and frack and dump and pump and so on. Cause no one cares really, about our grand kids.
We are enacting the solution to the environment problem. In time the earth will heal. The earth will still be here after we go away.
And we are going away. sooner than later, Thank God! I will drive my chevy into the fires......
t. we do not go away, we enter eternity to meet Almighty God!!
Here in AR we are selling off our cattle, the grasslands have tried up, the ponds are bone dry. Last year we sold our hay to TX, this year we have none. We have food grade soybeans planted on our place this year & they are doing well but only because we rotate crops & wells were dug years ago for the rice crop. This year we are watering the beans....this winter, winter wheat. We are part of the world's bread basket, we grow the riceland rice.
And you are respected and appreciated.
Looks like they're using wrong chemicals in planes to make rain and instead it brought us drought. See what happens when you mess with Mother Nature and try to create man-made weather to control the world? If you don't see it, try looking up and watching. Water dept in CO brags about it, gives grants to private co.'s to create weather madness. What goes up must come down.
it's all about locatio, location, location. up here in northern chesehead land the crops are doing excellent. it's the same in central wisconsin.
There is no drought. It is just the government trying to control us. And by the way, there is no Global Warming or Global Climate Change either. You people are so gullible.
We will all suffer as victims of our greed and stupidity. It's just a matter of time, now.
It is time to pray to Almighty God. So many have said for so long that we do not need God. God will make Himself known in His timing. We will be brought to our knees!!
Jim in PA, your god is not going to save you or your family. You will suffer as much as the rest of us.
Just a normal person, in this life you might be right but in eternity His Son Jesus died for me so that I will live forever with the Father. Praise His name!!
It seems like we would have made more progress in the intellectual front in 5000 years. It seems to have passed some people by.
Jim in PA, you know in your heart of hearts that you sin every day, day after day. The vanity of your heart tells you that you are special but you know deep down inside that you are not special. Your vanity has hardened your heart so that you lack any real compassion for those less fortunate than you. You can pretend that you are special but if you are really honest with yourself, you know what I say is true. You boast of your god but continue to sin anyways.
You are likely to be among the biggest whiners when you are not spared in this life or the next one. You are a hyprocrite. You are really a pharasee. You lack the compassion to enter into heaven.
Remember what all the neocons/teabaggers/evan-taliban and GOP reps have been saying - IT'S SUMMERTIME!
Sadly this is not about politics. This is about the God who made our country great but must remind a godless nation who He is!!
You can believe whatever Medieval nonsense you want to Jim, but don't be expecting us to base policy on it.
keep on spraying the skies with whatever chemicals your using to change the weather patterns, keep cranking up the HARRP death machines to disrupt the atmosphere and electronic signals and waves, keep making HAARP Rings to disrupt normal weather. Yep you didn't count on this now did you. Already broke Americans having an impossible time feeding there family fighting high prices between food and oil. Just killing any savings that might be put away. Now we will have to pay yet even much higher food prices that we cannot already afford. As OIL prices are going up again also!
Attention US Government. You literally are destroying everything we have ever worked for. Hitting the average working class American at every angle possible. When those angled are exhausted it seems like you find or make up more angles and excuses.
You need to Stop giving our food away to other countries as bad as it may seem. You need to pump more domestic Oil to lower gas prices thus all prices. You need to concentration on the United States and take care of home and your people. Really! and PLEASE!
So it is not near as bad as it was in the 1930s when CO2 was below the often claimed "safe" level of 350 ppm.
In 1934 Nebraska harvested only 6.2 bushels of corn per acre. For this year the predicted harvest is over 100 bushels.
http://www.livinghistoryfarm.org/farminginthe30s/water_03.html
http://cropwatch.unl.edu/web/cropwatch/archive?articleID=4938371
Sounds like CO2 has nothing to do with it.
And forest fires this year aren't as bad as they were in 2006. Year to date 2006 burned almost 1 million acres more than this year. And in fact this years total 4,045,792 is very close to the 10 year average of 3,920,375.
http://www.nifc.gov/fireInfo/nfn.htm
Oh, and remember how they've been telling us for years that the heat from global warming was going to cause more storms and tornadoes?
http://www2.ucar.edu/atmosnews/opinion/7547/summertime-and-twisters-are-missin
And Antarctica is currently colder than normal and Alaska is having one of its coldest summers. Wait. Didn't they say the heat was going to show up at the poles first?
http://www.alaskadispatch.com/article/while-most-america-sizzles-alaskans-shiver-through-chilly-summer
http://notrickszone.com/2012/07/26/extremely-unusual-cold-deviation-of-20k-now-occurring-over-antarctica/
You really don't understand what the word TREND means, do you?
Either that or you are just fundamentally dishonest.
Snow pack for th last few years since 2009 in North Dakota have been huge. Flooding throughout the state is the indicator. Which means great crops (Hard Spring Wheat specifically in the west and potatoes & sugurbeets in the east). This year its been dryer but the crops are generally normal. It's funny how urban bloviation starts when mainstreet media has an agenda. Come out of your little worlds before making pie-eyed statments. As long as my family has lived and farmed in ND (120 yrs) our records show the same cycles (close match to the farmers almanac).
Good for North Dakota.
Go out and visit your favorite buffoon.
Poke him/her/it with a pointy stick to get their attention.
After they stop chasing and biting their tail ask them how that global cooling philosophy is working out for them.
Why do we feed 300,000 people who can't take care of themselves or their nation, only to have to come back 7 years later and feed 400,000. The earth can not support our human population.
The reason for the nationwide drought.....George W Bush.
Sorry...I take that statement back. It's not Bush's fault. Probably something to do with cyclic climate change. We'll be OK.
Actually, it turns out that the reason for drought is a lack of rain. Who knew?
It's Obama's fault - his immoral policies have put the rath of God upon us.
Unfortunately some people actually believe that.
I thought that after Obama was elected the oceans would lower, and the earth could heal. Funny that he doesn't talk about green energy or global warming during this election.
It's just a trend in the weather, no big deal , it will pass .... ha ha ha ha
Gimme a break. Liberals preach against conservatives for using fear to promote their agenda - yet the liberals are here in droves using fear to promote THEIR agenda. Liberalism: Hypocrisy at its finest.
There are hypocrites and scaremongers everywhere, but that doesn't make it OK.
the wingnut's last words as he lays dying in the iowa desert - global...warming...liberal...hoax...LIMBAUGH!!! MY LIFE FOR YOU!!! argh....
The liberal hater's last words as he lays dying in the hospital, which has no electricity to treat him due to the EPA prohibiting drilling for oil/digging for uranium/fracking for gas..... "corporations.... are.... greedy.... OBAMA!!! MY LIFE FOR YOU!!!!"
Now exactly how does that respect for others view points work again?
This is the internet, Jay. We don't need no stinkin' respect!
Looks like the environmental hippies had it right for all of these years. That's got to piss the hell out of the naysayers and is probably why they're still in denial.
What do the "environmental hippies" say caused the Dust Bowl 80 years ago?
JohnnyOnTheSpot-3794903
Ignorant farming and conservation practices. It took a dust bowl to convince the naysayers that we needed trees to provide windbreaks in order to retain topsoil and that they had to diversify crops so that huge tracks of land would not be open to the ravages of sun, wind, and weather. Now they need to learn what the relationship of these same practices has with pollution and man made impact on the climate of the planet. It's like trying to teach a republican that the policies of the 1920's that caused the great depression in the 1930's are what is driving us into another depression now.
Johnny, most historians agree that it was a combination of drought and poor farming practices that caused the Dust Bowl. Yes, the temperatures in the U.S. were about as hot back then as they are now. Nobody has claimed this has never happened nefore.