Most of the country is “abnormally dry,” and some of the worst-hit places don’t look like they’ll get much help soon.
A lot of the United States is unusually dry in large parts. Drought has been a problem in the western US for a long time, but it’s now spread to areas that aren’t usually this dry.
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration says that nearly 60% of the contiguous US is in a drought (NOAA). Over 80 percent of the country is at least experiencing “abnormally dry” conditions, which is a first in the US Drought Monitor’s 22-year history. This is the worst drought the country has seen in about a decade.
Lack of water has also made it illegal to have front lawns, ruined farmland, and messed up river shipping routes.
This year, boats from World War II were found in Lake Mead and Lake Shasta, both of which are drying up because of the drought. The number of shipwrecks that have been found recently has moved east. When the water level in the Mississippi River got close to a record low last week, the bones of a ferry that probably sank near Baton Rouge around the turn of the 20th century were exposed. But because there isn’t enough water, front lawns are illegal, agricultural fields are empty, and river shipping routes are messed up.
For two reasons, Brad Pugh, a meteorologist at NOAA, tells The Verge that this drought is one of the worst in the last 20 years. There is a long-term drought in the west that has happened before, and there is also a short-term drought in the midwest and southeastern US. The maps below show how things were in October 2021 and October 2022, so you can see the difference.
The colors on the maps show how dry it is, from “abnormally dry” (yellow) to “exceptional drought” (red) (burgundy). On the map for October 2021, most of the western US was in a severe to exceptional drought, while most of the central and eastern US were not in a drought. At least 80% of the country is shaded in fiery colors on the October 2022 map, which means it is dry.
From December 2011 to March 2019, California had its longest drought on record. A recent study found that the “megadrought” that has been going on in the southwestern part of North America for 22 years is the driest the area has been in at least 1,200 years.
Climate change has made the area even drier, even though it has always been dry. When it’s hot, the soil and plants just dry out faster. But there are other things going on, such as La Nia. The weather pattern called the El Nio-Southern Oscillation says that the event usually happens every two to seven years (ENSO). Only when La Nia happened in 2020 was it not normal, just like everyone else that year.
The world is facing a rare “triple-dip” La Nia, which is likely to last through a third winter. Pugh says that this is only the third “triple-dip” event since the 1950s. It has made the drought in the Horn of Africa last longer than it has in the past 40 years. Pugh says that this La Nia is also a main cause of the long-term drought in the western US right now. It’s also expected to make the southern United States warmer and drier. Because of this, a NOAA forecast from last week says that drought conditions could get worse along the Gulf Coast this winter. Parts of the southeastern US that are already suffering from the current short-term drought will probably have to deal with it for the next few months.
Even a few wet years won’t be enough to make up for how dry the area has become.
But La Nia has different effects in different parts of the world. La Nia usually causes drought in the southern parts of the country, but it usually brings rain to the northwest. The Midwest won’t be dry this winter because of La Nia either. So, since September and October were very dry, Pugh thinks that the short-term drought in the midwest will end in the next week or two as a much wetter pattern starts to take shape in the central US.
Unfortunately for the southwest, it will probably take more than one wet year to make up for how bone dry the area has become because of the megadrought. And climate change will keep sucking the West dry as long as cars that use a lot of gas and power plants that use fossil fuels keep putting out greenhouse gases. Less snowfall and warmer weather will make it harder to get enough water. All of this will keep forcing many communities to figure out how to live with less water than they’ve had before.
