Drouth Big Story Across South,
But Weather Crazy Everywhere

Talk about your crazy weather.

Drouth reigns through the Southwest and much of the South, scorching rangeland and crops and fueling fires from New Mexico to Florida. Meanwhile, the West Coast and the upper Midwest through the Northeast are still being pummeled with excessive rainfall. And while it’s snowing in parts of the Rockies, it’s flooding in other mountain areas, where unseasonally hot temperatures are prematurely melting last winter’s snowpack.

Drouth is no stranger to the Southwest; whereas the term can be applied to a few days’ deprivation elsewhere, farmers and ranchers in the dry country feel self-conscious bringing it up until the situation has dragged on for weeks or months. Commentators in East Texas refer to the "drouth of ‘96" and compare this year’s woes to that one, but a few hundred miles to the west, it’s generally recognized that the current drouth started well before 1996 and hasn’t really let up.

El Niño commonly gets the blame for much of the weather weirdness elsewhere, but it was dry in West Texas long before that mischievous boy child was conceived. The worry is that it may still be dry when his contrary sister, "La Niña," has come and gone in his wake; that happened when the terrible twosome last struck in force during the early 1980s.

For now, almost the entire state is getting a taste of what is normal west of the 100th meridian and south of the Nueces.

Texas officials are projecting agricultural losses of $517 million this year and an overall economic loss of $1.7 billion. As of early last Friday, 33 counties had begun applying for a federal disaster declaration.

Even in town, the evidence goes beyond parched lawns and outdoor water rationing.

Varmints are heading toward homes in search of something to drink. Opossums, which raid garbage cans and eat almost anything, have been spotted most often. Veterinarians at Oso Creek Animal Hospital in Corpus Christi recently saw a coyote near their doorstep.

In Big Bend National Park, mountain lions, which usually avoid people, have been less shy this year. Park officials are warning visitors.

"We are telling them to be aware that there is a possibility that a cat can assault you anywhere, because right now they are hungry and stressed out from the lack of water," ranger Mary Kay Manning said.

Texas has endured at least one drouth every decade since the 1820s, including the Depression-era Dust Bowl and the seven-year drouth in the 1950s.

History may look back sadly at the 1990s as well, especially in the Rio Grande Valley, which has had only a brief respite from drouth in five years. In 1996, more than half of Texas' 254 counties were declared disaster areas and drouth-related losses were estimated at $5 billion.

The Rio Grande region hasn't had any significant rainfall since early this year. The Valley's two reservoirs, Falcon Dam and Lake Amistad, are at one-quarter capacity, forcing several cities to restrict water for their residents. Farther north, water levels are dipping in the Edwards Aquifer, the area's underground natural reservoir.

Texas Agriculture Commissioner Rick Perry says U.S. Agriculture Secretary Dan Glickman has "vowed" to work with state officials to help farmers and ranchers struggling with persistent drouth conditions.

"It's time to put the lessons learned from the drouth of 1996 into play for 1998," Perry said in a news release issued last Thursday, a day after he briefed Glickman in Washington on the drouth conditions.

"Secretary Glickman is now well aware of the serious situation we're facing in Texas and he has vowed to work with me and our congressional delegation to help our farmers and ranchers during this rough time," Perry added.

If conditions persist, ag economists said in a report this week, the 1998 drouth could be more costly than the one two years ago, which cost the state some $5 billion.

Perry said he urged Glickman to streamline the disaster declaration process. In 1996, some Texas applications for disaster declarations took four months to process, he said.

In New Mexico, fires have burned thousands of tinder-dry acres of rangeland, and restrictions have been posted statewide to prevent more land from going up in smoke.

"Blame it on El Nino," Frank Smith, chief of fire management for the state Forestry Division, said last Thursday.

The weather has been hot and dry, and wind has kicked up almost daily.

"And therefore, when we do get an ignition, we get a rapid spread on it and its resistance to control is way higher," Smith said.

There's no relief in sight for the next few weeks, he said.

Thunderstorms that traditionally start popping up in the first week of July might not appear until the end of July, Smith said.

A fire slashed through eight miles of central Lea County ranches early last week, burning an estimated 15,000 to 20,000 acres. No structures were burned and no livestock lost.

"It's a pretty helpless feeling when a fire is traveling that fast," said Bill Lees, whose home was within 100 yards of the flames and who lost seven to eight miles of fence.

"This was one of the most destructive fires I've seen," he said. "It was pretty incendiary, a hard fire to fight. Every fence it hit is going to have to be replaced. I've never seen a fire take out so many highline poles, even the big double pole transmission lines."

Smith said another fire burned 600 acres of ranchland west of Roswell at midweek, closing U.S. 70 for about an hour.

Another fire, driven by 20 to 25 mph winds, charred 1000 acres three miles south of Cannon Air Force Base, he said.

As of last Wednesday, fires had burned 72,190 acres in New Mexico, 67,638 of that on state and private land, according to the Southwest Interagency Coordination Center in Albuquerque.

A drouth management bill sponsored by U.S. Rep. Joe Skeen, R-N.M., passed the U.S. House last week, and Sen. Pete Domenici, also a New Mexico Republican, says he's urging the Senate to accept the House modifications.

Domenici's similar bill was approved by the Senate last November.

The two New Mexico Republicans said their National Drouth Policy Act would establish a commission to plan ways of dealing with drouth. Skeen said federal and local agencies have never coordinated drouth-relief efforts the way flood relief is coordinated.

Estimated losses caused by drouth average $6 billion to $8 billion a year.

What makes the current situation a national story — and undoubtedly helped spur action on Skeen’s bill in Washington — is that the drouth and heat problem isn’t just confined to the largely overlooked Southwest this time. It has stretched clear across the South to the East Coast.

Wildfires have struck more than half of Florida's rain-starved counties in a situation some observers are calling the worst in half a century.

"It would take a tropical system to dump a lot of water on the state to make a difference," said Barbara Doran of the Florida Emergency Operations Center in Tallahassee.

In all, she said, fires burned in 38 of the state's 67 counties.

Blazes have ravaged drouth-striken Florida since Memorial Day, singeing more than 67,000 acres and damaging 114 homes and businesses. One person died in Seminole County.

Last Friday, President Clinton declared all of Florida a fire disaster area, giving emergency relief to exhausted fire fighters.

That federal emergency declaration expanded a previous one from seven counties to every one of Florida's 67 counties. The latest move would bring in federal forestry workers and equipment to help fight the Florida blazes.

By the weekend, health alerts were in effect in smoke-affected areas.

Severe drouth and record-breaking temperatures coupled to bake several Florida cities. Melbourne, in central Florida, hit 14 record temperatures in 18 straight days.

Friday, temperatures in Jacksonville reached 101 degrees, beating a record high of 99 for the date set in 1990. That marked the eighth day in a row that temperatures hit 99 or higher in the city on Florida's northeast coast.

As for rainfall, Jacksonville in June recorded just a trace. In an average June, the city has rainfall of 5.69 inches.

From the Florida Panhandle down south to Okechoobee, the Florida drouth has been so severe officials have been warning residents dry brush is a dangerous fire risk.

Drouth is not the problem elsewhere, however.

Each time the skies darken over waterlogged Day County, South Dakota, Carlton Barse Jr. takes another look at swollen Waubay Lake.

Any precipitation is too much in the northeastern part of the state, said Barse, Waubay's mayor.

"The last thing we need right now is more rain," he said.

But the rain keeps coming. Thunderstorms dropped more precipitation last week, adding to water problems the northeast has struggling with for five years.

Residents say their communities at hurting.

"The town of Spencer died of a heart attack. We have cancer. We're dying a slow death," said Mary Rudebusch, of rural Waubay.

In south central Montana, the Beartooth Highway between Cooke City and Red Lodge has been closed indefinitely by snowdrifts four to five feet deep.

And in California’s Southern Sierras last week, the National Weather Service issued its first flood warning of the season attributed to rapidly melting snowpack.

Crazy weather, indeed.