The Drought

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OMG - we are running out of water.  Lake Mead is drying up. Global Warming is all to blame.
Some people don't know their history - from John Steinbeck's East of Eden:

I have spoken of the rich years when the rainfall was plentiful. But there were dry years too, and they put a terror on the valley. The water came in a thirty-year cycle. There would be five or six wet and wonderful years when there might be nineteen to twenty-five inches of rain, and the land would shout with grass. Then would come six or seven pretty good years of twelve to sixteen inches of rain. And then the dry years would come, and sometimes there would be only seven or eight inches of rain. The land dried up and the grasses headed out miserably a few inches high and great bare scabby places appeared in the valley. The live oaks got a crusty look and the sagebrush was gray. The land cracked and the springs dried up and the cattle listlessly nibbled dry twigs. Then the farmers and the ranchers would be filled with disgust for the Salinas Valley. The cows would grow thin and sometimes starve to death. People would have to haul water in barrels to their farms just for drinking. Some families would sell out for nearly nothing and move away. And it never failed that during the dry years the people forgot about the rich years, and during the wet years they lost all memory of the dry years. It was always that way.

Published in 1952.  This is not some forgotten 70-year-old history either.  Anyone remember the Oroville Dam crisis of 2017 - higher than normal rainfall and snowmelt triggered it.  This is not climate, this is weather and it has cycles.
Plain and simple.

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This page contains a single entry by DaveH published on July 21, 2021 8:03 PM.

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