*It is, however, the hottest and the weirdest. Can you say "Greenhouse Effect"? Not if you're the Governor of Texas.
http://www.statesman.com/news/content/news/stories/local/2009/07/23/0723drought.html
Drought not one for the ages yet
But LCRA officials say we're seeing more heat, less rain than in 1950s.
By Asher Price
AMERICAN-STATESMAN STAFF
Thursday, July 23, 2009
"The drought that has gripped Central Texas is approaching the severity of Texas' most famous drought, the one that sucked the land dry in the 1950s, Lower Colorado River Authority officials said Wednesday.
"The 1950s drought lasted longer than has the current dry spell, which began in the fall of 2007, but the current drought has seen more intense concentrations of high temperatures and less rainfall than the majority of the earlier drought.
"What makes our current drought unique is not the duration but the severity," LCRA meteorologist Bob Rose said at a drought briefing for meteorologists and reporters.
Officials said the Highland Lakes continue to have plenty of water to meet needs across Central Texas. But they said they will ask their customers to put in mandatory restrictions, probably next month, on nonessential uses, such as lawn and landscape watering, swimming pools and car washing.
"The public expects LCRA to be good stewards, and it's obvious there's no water to waste," said Karen Bondy, the authority's river services manager.
Some LCRA customers, like the City of Austin, have already activated mandatory water restrictions.
The restrictions come as the region continues to be suffocated by oppressive heat. The period between June 22 and July 21 is the warmest 30-day period on record. The temperatures averaged 89.7 degrees.
Drought, which is sometimes defined as a period when an area in a given year receives less than 75 percent of its average rainfall, is not uncommon in Texas.
As with all severe droughts, comparisons with the 1950s drought, which was memorialized in novels such as Elmer Kelton's "The Time It Never Rained" and is the sort of bad-scenario benchmark for regional water planning, have become inevitable.
"It was hot, yes, it was dry" in the 1950s, said Rose, "but it wasn't crazy hot like this year...."
