Dust

While the Midwest is suffering through another round of flooding from record setting rainfall this spring, just next door in parts of Oklahoma, conditions are very different.  

Officials in the Oklahoma Panhandle are appealing for government aid to help with the effects of a drought that has harmed crops and livestock forage.

"This area is starting to look like the Sahara Desert," said Ann Boyd, a 76-year-old rancher in Cimarron County, at the western edge of the Panhandle. "There's just nothing here. Even the weeds are dying. The buffalo grass isn't coming up. There's nothing."

The US Drought Monitor just updated the drought in the panhandle area to "exceptional" -- its worst rating.  Less than an inch and a half of rain has fallen in the area so far this year, which puts western Oklahoma well below the average for the real Sahara Desert.  

How bad is it?

It's drier now than it was in the Dust Bowl years of the 1930s, and to date it's the second driest year on record for the Panhandle. ... Crops are failing. Cattle are starving. The winds are howling.

Drought conditions are also growing worse in Texas and other areas of the Southwest.  And if you thought that conditions had eased in the Southeast, think again.  Conditions there range from "severe drought" to "extreme drought," with river levels falling to record lows.

When scientists talk of the link between extreme weather and climate change, it's easy think of raging hurricanes or a plague of tornadoes.  When we look at the link between climate change and national security, thoughts may turn to floods rising in distant lands.  But devastation can come as quietly as a cloudless sky.  Day, after day, after day.