NCDC: Drought Spreads across 43% of US

by Janet Ritz

The National Climate Data Center reported this week that the drought parching the south and the west has now spread to the mid-Atlantic states:

National Drought Mitigation Center Drought Monitor

NCDC animation:

1. Short-term U.S. drought conditions
2. Long-term meteorological U.S. drought conditions
3. Long-term hydrological U.S. drought conditions

The agency, according to this CNN report, has pronounced 2007 as the warmest year on record worldwide on land, so far, and was close to the record over the oceans and the fourth warmest overall:

Impacted regions include California, experiencing its driest year on record, which has led to problems like this; the Great Lakes, which are becoming less great daily; Maryland, Pennsylvania and New York, which are all instituting water rationing; Tennessee, which just shut down a nuclear power plant due to inadequate water supplies; Florida, with its disappearing lakes, and Georgia, whose reservoirs have all but disappeared.

At the end of September about 43 percent of the contiguous United States was in moderate to extreme drought, the National Climate Data Center said Tuesday.

Conversely, as indicated in green on the NCDC chart, Texas, which has seen extreme flooding over the past few months, as a great deal of the water that would normally fall upon the rest of the south seems to have stalled there, can expect to see more.

For the 43% of the country desperate for Texas' rain? The NCDC charts point those areas out from beige to brown.