Premature Proclamation

I've been waiting for this. I knew somebody was going to say it, the question is, are they right?<br />n<br />n<a href="http://www.newwest.net/index.php/main/article/1349/" target="_new">Drought? What Drought? and Big Macs on Parade</a><br />n<br />nNow I'll admit, in my area we've received good moisture this spring and in the past week have picked up probably 6-8 inches of additional moisture, so does that mean the drought is over? Fraid not. The immediate, Agricultural style drought is over.<br />n<br />n<i>Agricultural drought: "A climatic excursion involving a shortage of precipitation sufficient to adversely affect crop production or range production."</i><br />n<br />nBut the Meteorological and Hydrological drought are not over and are still something to be watched.<br />n<br />n<i>Meteorological drought: "A period of abnormally dry weather sufficiently prolonged for the lack of water to cause serious hydrologic imbalance in the affected area."</i><br />n<br />n<i>Hydrological drought: "A period of below average water content in streams, reservoirs, ground-water aquifers, lakes and soils."</i><br />n<br />nThen there is the last definition of a drought the Socioeconomic drought.<br />n<br />n<i>Socioeconomic drought refers to the situation that occurs when water shortages begin to effect people and their lives.</i><br />n<br />nTaking all these things into account just shows us that the drought is not over, even though there is a surplus of moisture in the region. You have to remember not all areas are getting the moisture and even if they are it would take years of this kind of moisture to bring some of the water tables back up around here that have gone down over the past 8 years of drought. The moisture this year is nice, but the drought is not over. For more information on types of droughts visit <a href="http://www.drought.unl.edu/whatis/concept.htm" target="_new">here</a>.<br />n<br />n<b>A cynic is not merely one who reads bitter lessons from the past, he is one who is prematurely disappointed in the future. Sidney J. Harris</b><br />n<br />n<b>UPDATE:</b> The link above, <a href="http://www.newwest.net/index.php/main/article/1349/" target="_new">Drought? What Drought? and Big Macs on Parade</a>, actually lead to a story at New West that said the drought was over. I see the link now leads to no story but shows my trackback is all. I don't know if there was a problem with the blog or the entry stating the drought was over was removed after I challenged it. I will point out that removing a blog entry is bad form. You can correct yourself if wrong which I have done before but to just flat remove it is poor form.<br />n<br />n<b>UPDATE II:</b> There is <a href="http://www.billingsgazette.com/index.php?display=rednews/2005/05/13/build/state/25-drought.inc" target="_new">an article</a> in the Gazette discussing this issue now. I wish they would have given a link to the drought monitor they speak of but I <a href="http://drought.unl.edu/dm/monitor.html" target="_new">found it</a>. I think it changes every week so it won't be up to date to this article very long. Check out the 12 week animation on the page. It's pretty neat.