Drought has been a problem this year in the corn and soybean growing area but it has been an ongoing problem for some time. Global Warming makes it worse especially in areas where it leads to reduced precipitation. But in all areas, it results in higher rates of evaporation and possible transpiration.
We are not going into drought in detail in this article but I am showing you some of what comes across my desk from NOAA that you might find interesting.
| You need to click HERE to watch the droughts unfold. Then you can scroll down to see how drought unfolded since 1921. It uses different metrics than the current drought monitor which allows us to go back farther in time. It is very dramatic. It was not possible for me to directly show the images in this article. |
Now we will take a look a the drought history from 2000 to 2020
| I have not included the criteria for the various categories of drought but you can see that since the Drought Monitor has been in existence drought has been fairly prevalent with short periods of minimal drought. |
| This is the most recent release of the Drought Monitor and you can see the situation which is not horrible but still fairly significant. |
Now we are going to look at two areas that have been impacted by drought recently. The third area is the Southwest which we are not covering in this article nor are we addressing the Colorado River Basin.
| People take the Mississippi River for granted but it is an important factor of the prosperity of the United States. In addition to providing water for irrigation the ability to use the river to transport materials is extremely important and it is impaired right now. I wish this image was a bit larger but if I try to do that the wording will be blurred but I will try to enlarge it a bit. |
| We are presenting this graphic to show that one impact of drought is reduced generation of electricity. There is a similar situation along the Colorado River. |
| I hope you found this article interesting and useful. |
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