EVERY year's weather is worse than the year before's. Each summer is hotter, each winter more bitter. At least, that's what people like to grumble; sometimes, though, the impression is actually accurate. According to a report on July 12th by the United States Drought Monitor, nearly 30% of the land in the contiguous United States (the 48 states other than Alaska and Hawaii) is affected by drought. Rainfall is at a fraction of its usual levels, heat at historical highs. Temperatures this week have exceeded 105°F (40°C) in many places—not just in the sweltering South, but in parts of the mid-Atlantic and the Great Plains, where soil soaked by the spring floods adds a horrible humidity.
About 12% of the country is in an “exceptional” drought, the worst category. That swathe of fire is centred on Texas, stretches north into Kansas, and sprawls from Arizona in the west to Georgia in the east (see map). And according to forecasts from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, things will get worse before they get better.
The National Drought Mitigation Centre at the University of Nebraska at Lincoln has catalogued the consequences, using media reports, government analyses and contributions from the public. It lists more than 1,000 problems in the past six months. There are wildfires in the south-west and water restrictions in the south-east. Fields are scrubby and fallow, and in some counties the ground is riddled with deep cracks. Farmers are struggling to produce crops, and ranchers are worried about watering their cattle. As their losses mount, crop prices have risen. According to a report from the Texas AgriLife Extension Service, wheat was selling at more than $8 a bushel at the beginning of the summer, compared with an average annual price of $5.25 last year. Still, Texas farmers will bring in only an estimated $274m this year; the average for the past five years was more than twice as high.
At least Texas is used to the heat. Northerners may be less well prepared for extreme temperatures. And in the south-eastern states, accustomed to having some of America's highest annual rainfalls, many counties and cities have had to establish water restrictions and bans on fires. Florida alone has had nearly 4,000 wildfires since the start of the year, with about 200,000 acres (80,000 hectares) burned.
Meteorologists say it is impossible to explain fully how these things happen. In 2010 the westward slopping of cooler water across the tropical Pacific, a phenomenon called La Niña, made itself felt on weather around the world. That La Niña is now over, according to scientists, but the patterns of atmospheric circulation that were associated with it are persisting, which could account for some of the drought. There is also the problem of man-made climate change, which is expected to intensify both droughts and floods. Scientists are by and large unwilling to put specific events down to climate change, but it is fair to point out that the drought is the sort of thing such change is expected to make more likely, not less.
The priority, in any case, is managing the impacts of the current drought and being better prepared for the next one. That ought to mean, for one thing, a more prudent approach to using water. In Texas, for example, the rise of hydraulic fracturing, in which water and chemicals are pumped underground to break up shale formations and release the natural gas trapped therein, has led to an energy boom that has helped boost the state's coffers. But in 2010 some 15.6 billion gallons of water were used in the process; about 15% of what the state uses for livestock each year.
This article appeared in the United States section of the print edition under the headline "Bone-dry"