USA Today: So Far, 2009 Is the Driest Year on Record
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Bad news for farmers and firefighters: USA Today reports that 2009 has been the driest year on average for the United States since we began keeping records in 1895.
The first two months of 2009 are the driest start of any year since the USA began keeping records over a century ago, leading to severe drought in Texas, dipping reservoir levels in Florida and a surge in wildfires across the nation.
Farmers, cattlemen, firefighters and others worry that the dry start may be a harbinger of a bleak summer that could lead to increasing risk of fire and poor crop conditions.
Cattle rancher Jim Selman of Gonzales, Texas, has sold all but 30 of his 300 to 400 breeding cows because his pasture is too dry to feed them. “It might take me 10 years or more to get back where I was,” he says. “It’s so dry.”
Richard Heim, a meteorologist at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s National Climatic Data Center, said the 2.69-inch average rainfall across the U.S. in January and February is the least amount of moisture in those months since NOAA began keeping records in 1895.
So far this year, the National Interagency Fire Center in Boise has logged 11,814 wildfires, the most for any two-month period in a decade and almost 3,700 more than the average.
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