Droughts

Sunny skies and moderate temperatures have made it a splendid fall up and down the East Coast. But the perfect weather has come with a price: drought. And forecasters see no immediate end to a dry spell that began in August. It was the third driest October on record for Connecticut and New Jersey and the fourth driest for Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Delaware and Virginia, according to the National Drought Mitigation Center at the University of Nebraska.

In some old gardens, you can feel the spirit of former owners. Perhaps that is why snapdragons look so comfortable in a weathered gray stone urn by a front stoop; four generations ago, snapdragons bloomed there, back when the house was new and the cement planter was white.

A four-year drought in Afghanistan has wiped out more than 80% of the cattle, sheep and goats in the north of the country, contributing significantly to the impoverishment of rural populations there, the United Nations said Sunday. A survey of 884 villages conducted by the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization in March and April found that the number of cattle in the north had been reduced 84% from 1997-1998.

Around this time each year, thousands make the pilgrimage to the Antelope Valley to see California poppies shining in the fields around Anne Aldrich's Lancaster home. "There are fields of orange, just like in 'The Wizard of Oz' when you first spot the Emerald City," Aldrich said. But not in 2007, as Southern California is poised to experience its driest year on record. "We don't have poppies this year. This is about the worst we've seen," she said. "It's desert-brown."

Corn is a key element of the U.S. food supply. It is what dairy cows eat to make milk and hens consume to lay eggs. It fattens cattle, hogs and chickens before slaughter. It makes soda sweet. As the building block of ethanol, it is now also a major component of auto fuel. And that may signal trouble ahead.

In this winter of disturbing weather across the Pacific Northwest, Ken Hasbrouck looked toward the Cascade Mountains the other day and saw more bad news on the horizon: another brilliant, sunny, clear blue sky. "I'd rather it would be miserable for a change," said Hasbrouck, manager of the Kittitas Reclamation District, which serves roughly 1,300 farmers on the eastern side of the mountains. "We need the rain."

Cattle ranchers say they have suffered $2.4 million in losses and have been forced to cut their herds because scant rain for two years has left rangelands without enough grass for grazing. The Tulare County Board of Supervisors declared a state of emergency because of the drought, hoping to get some financial relief from the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Rainfall has been down about 75% over the last two years, said Jim Sullins of the UC Cooperative Extension in the county.

A rainy, snowy fall and early winter are quickly quenching the remnants of the two-year drought along the East Coast. The Christmas storm that blew across Pennsylvania, New York and New England was icing on the cake for soil moisture and groundwater watchers, said Randy Durlin of the U.S. Geological Survey in Harrisburg. Even before the storm, Durlin said Friday, "we've seen great recovery. It's been perfect, it's just been slow rain. The ground didn't freeze, so it soaked in."

Lake Mead's water level probably will slip to drought alert status by the end of the year and could create an emergency water shortage by 2005, according to a Southern Nevada Water Authority official. Deputy Chief Kay Brothers told board members that the snowpack on the western slopes of the Rocky Mountains isn't deep enough to end the worst drought in more than a century.

In the parched Mexican countryside, the corn is wilting, the wheat stunted. And here in this vast and thirsty capital, officials are rationing water and threatening worse cuts as Mexico endures one of the driest spells in more than half a century. A months-long drought has affected broad swaths of the country, from the U.S. border to the Yucatan Peninsula, leaving crop fields parched and many reservoirs low. The need for rain is so dire that water officials have been rooting openly for a hurricane or two to provide a good drenching.