US Drought Area Down 80% From 80 Years Ago

The area of the US covered by drought is down 80% from the same date 80 years ago. This is the exact opposite of what experts predicted, and also the exact opposite of what experts say is happening.

Nov2014PMDIvs1934

About Tony Heller

Just having fun
This entry was posted in Uncategorized. Bookmark the permalink.

26 Responses to US Drought Area Down 80% From 80 Years Ago

  1. nielszoo says:

    This is such a crock. My area of Central Florida is listed as “mid range” and there are places on my property that have not been dry since last winter and all my pastures are still squishy. The ground’s so saturated we got a flood warning from NWS a few days ago due to a storm that was no more than an average summer afternoon rainfall.

    I don’t know how they calculate the “modified” drought index but here in Florida the modifications are opposing reality.

  2. Gail Combs says:

    Yes Niel, it is a crock. I am in mid NC

    My fungi (puffballs) had mold growing on it and I am having to clean and wash everything in the entire house to get rid of the mold. I have developed asthma for the first time in my life too. The guy across the street who has been here since he was born was complaining all his leather (Saddles, driving harness and bridles) are covered in mold. So are mine and two of my saddles I have had since the late sixties and NEVER had mold on them till this year.

  3. DavidS says:

    I don’t see it as very useful to make a snapshot comparison like this. They don’t convince anyone who is not already inclined to be convinced. It is easy to simply accuse it as cherry picking and then have it dismissed. Long term, comprehensive comparisons are far more useful, more informative and more difficult to criticize.

  4. Tom Bakert says:

    I suspect that the number of people who accept the government drought reports as accurate are those actually experiencing drought conditions – i.e., very few. The rest will either not know of, not care about or not believe the reports of widespread drought.

  5. Psalmon says:

    California receiving 5-6 inches of rain in the Northern mountains and foothills over the next 5 days. At the end of this cycle No CA 8 station will be at or above normal for the rain year. Not a peep from the media.

    • nielszoo says:

      It’ll be up right after Fast-n-Furious, Benghazi, BLM abuses, NSA and FBI data vacuuming, IRS targeting and information sharing, Obamacare debacles, EPA overreach and collusion, nuclear Iraq, ISIS, Ebola response, amnesty for foreign criminals, auditing the Fed and the 2014 election results. By my count they should have a story on or about December 23, 2036.

      • Gail Combs says:

        Traditional media figures they do not have to cover those subjects since they have been so well covered by their competition in the new media.

    • nielszoo says:

      … oh, and the truth about Mann made climate disruption.

    • Andy DC says:

      Yes, whatever drought there is in California should be gone soon, unless it devolves into the dreaded droughtflood.

  6. An Inquirer says:

    For several years, I have a very hard time believing the government analysis on abnormally dry to moderate drought to severe drought. To be sure, the obvious cases of extreme drought ususally do seem to match reality, But many times, my county showed up in moderate drought when riding lawn mowers were getting stuck in back yards because the ground was so saturated. Even now, the government analysis shows my area in “mid range,” but ponds and swamps have been higher only once in the past 40 years. There is small wonder why government analysis loses credibility.

  7. jamzwj says:

    This is a really good look at serious weather pattern changes. We can immediately see the Oakey migration to the Golden State. I wonder if changes in the Jet Stream patterns are driving the weather.

    • Gail Combs says:

      I wonder if changes in the Jet Stream patterns are driving the weather.

      In a word yes. The Russians have had an index for jet stream loopiness called the ACI for arctic circulation index for decades. http://www.fao.org/docrep/005/y2787e/y2787e03c.htm#FiguraC

      There seems to be a connection between changes in the amount of the sun’s energy radiated in the UV/EUV bands during solar maxima and minima and the position of the jet streams. Ozone and Cosmic Rays are considered the likely links.

      Needless to say trying to find a cohesive description instead of bits and pieces is almost impossible in an age when CO2 is supposed to cause everything.

      One suggestion is the more Ozone there is the more the jet streams move to the poles and the less depth to the Rossby waves (loopiness of the jet stream). What we are seeing at present is a long term reduction of about 40% in the EUV and FUV emissions and a reduction in Ozone.

      The extra ozone absorbs more UV energy which heats the stratosphere around the equator more during solar maxima than during minima. See
      http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/1999/04/990412075538.htm (but forget the climate model babble).
      That is thought to cause the shift of the jet streams poleward and reverse during solar minima. With the current low maximum in solar activity, the jet streams didn’t shift that far poleward as in previous maxima, thus giving different weather patterns.

      The jet stream position is extremely important, as it gives huge differences in clouds and rain patterns and river flows: From the Nile, Po (Italy – Venice) and Portuguese rivers around the Mediterranean to the Mississippi in the US and similar in South Africa. See for the stratosphere-troposphere connection:
      onlinelibrary(DOT)wiley.com/doi/10.1029/2005GL024393/abstract

      and for the river flows e.g.:
      (wwwDOT)agu.org/pubs/crossref/2005/2005GL023787.shtml (Portugal)

      ks(DOT)water.usgs.gov/Kansas/pubs/reports/paclim99.html (Mississippi delta)

      earthobservatory(DOT)nasa.gov/Features/Ozone/ozone_2.php

      wattsupwiththat(DOT)com/2013/01/31/ozone-depletion-trumps-greenhouse-gas-increase-in-jet-stream-shift/

      (wwwDOT)climatecentral.org/news/ozone-holes-shifting-winds-may-be-sapping-major-carbon-sink-15530
      The North Atlantic jet stream correlates with Solar output over a millennium
      joannenova(DOT)com.au/2014/03/solar-output-correllates-with-the-north-atlantic-jet-stream-over-a-millenia/
      ….

      Then there is the Cosmic ray connection.

      Stratospheric polar vortex as a possible reason for temporal variations of solar activity and galactic cosmic ray effects on the lower atmosphere circulation

      (wwwDOT)sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0273117713005474

      “Possible reasons for the temporal instability of long-term effects of solar activity (SA) and galactic cosmic ray (GCR) variations on the lower atmosphere circulation were studied. It was shown that the detected earlier ?60-year oscillations of the amplitude and sign of SA/GCR effects on the troposphere pressure at high and middle latitudes (Veretenenko and Ogurtsov, Adv.Space Res., 2012) are closely related to the state of a cyclonic vortex forming in the polar stratosphere. The intensity of the vortex was found to reveal a roughly 60-year periodicity affecting the evolution of the large-scale atmospheric circulation and the character of SA/GCR effects. An intensification of both Arctic anticyclones and mid-latitudinal cyclones associated with an increase of GCR fluxes at minima of the 11-year solar cycles is observed in the epochs of a strong polar vortex. In the epochs of a weak polar vortex SA/GCR effects on the development of baric systems at middle and high latitudes were found to change the sign. The results obtained provide evidence that the mechanism of solar activity and cosmic ray influences on the lower atmosphere circulation involves changes in the evolution of the stratospheric polar vortex.”

      06 May 2012 Nature Geoscience | Letter Regional atmospheric circulation shifts induced by a grand solar minimum

      ABSTRACT
      Large changes in solar ultraviolet radiation can indirectly affect climate by inducing atmospheric changes. Specifically, it has been suggested that centennial-scale climate variability during the Holocene epoch was controlled by the Sun. However, the amplitude of solar forcing is small when compared with the climatic effects and, without reliable data sets, it is unclear which feedback mechanisms could have amplified the forcing. Here we analyse annually laminated sediments of Lake Meerfelder Maar, Germany, to derive variations in wind strength and the rate of 10Be accumulation, a proxy for solar activity, from 3,300 to 2,000 years before present. We find a sharp increase in windiness and cosmogenic 10Be deposition 2,759? ±? 39 varve years before present and a reduction in both entities 199? ±? 9 annual layers later. We infer that the atmospheric circulation reacted abruptly and in phase with the solar minimum. A shift in atmospheric circulation in response to changes in solar activity is broadly consistent with atmospheric circulation patterns in long-term climate model simulations, and in reanalysis data that assimilate observations from recent solar minima into a climate model. We conclude that changes in atmospheric circulation amplified the solar signal and caused abrupt climate change about 2,800 years ago, coincident with a grand solar minimum.

      Atmospheric ionization and clouds as links between solar activity and climate, in Solar Variability and Its Effects on Climate

      “In a winter cyclone the primary driver of the dynamics is the baroclinic instability in the winter circulation, with the storm extracting vorticity from the latitudinal shear in the circulation, and converting it to the vorticity of the cyclone. The effective diabatic heating associated with precipitation and reduced cooling of entrained air amounts to an increase in potential vorticity and uplift in the air mass, and is likely to concentrate the vorticity near the cyclone center. In addition, by enhancing the feedback processes inherent in the baroclinic instability, it can increase the overall vorticity of the cyclone. It has been demonstrated analytically by van Delden [1989] and from numerical storm simulations by Zimmerman et al. [1989] and Mallet et al. (1999) that a positive feedback exists between the storm dynamical configuration and the diabatic processes. Thus precipitation changes explain the many reported examples of correlations of the vorticity area index (VAI) with GCR flux change and Jz reviewed by Tinsley [2000].”
      (wwwDOT)utdallas.edu/physics/pdf/Atmos_060302.pdf

  8. Psalmon says:

    Stumbled across this at USGS. Makes you wonder where the CA and SW drought is.

    http://waterwatch.usgs.gov/?m=dryw&w=map&r=us

  9. emsnews says:

    Yes, the drought of the century (which was only 3 years long!!!) has ended in California. This is their only remaining poster child polar bear for ‘global warming’ left and it is gone and dead now and replaced by cool rains.

    Oh, the horror! The warmists are grinding their molars in frustration and will need extensive dental work to fix this.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *