Severe weather

[Mortblanc]

Our drought conditions are media hype SS. The reporters are making a spectacle over drought in the desert. They are lamenting drought in the area that was once famously called the "Dust Bowl"!

They are not tracking climate change, they are tracking the overuse of the available water.

The areas in "drought" are supposed to be in drought. Just because humans decided to buy land, build houses and plant crops in the desert does not mean it is supposed to suddenly change from 10cm of rain annually to a meter of rain annually.

Right now the big cry seems to be that Lake Mede is drying up. Of course it is drying up, that area gets zero rainfall annually and depends on snow pack runoff. The snow pack is not failing, the population is simply sponging up all the water from the lake. Las Vegas, a city of millions, exists because of Lake Mede's water.

When Mede was built that desert was empty, for 50 years it has been one of the fastest growing parts of the nation and the population has outgrown the resource.

Same in all of our west. Everything past the 100 meridian to the pacific northwest gets less than 30cm of rain annually. Any food generated is grown artificially by diverting natural streams or deep well irrigation. They can still grow wheat over much of it, but the veggie patch will suffer.

When you hear about drought and fire in California you are hearing about the natural state of being for that region. All of California from just north of San Francisco to Mexico has been created from the desert it was for the past 20,000 years.