德州大旱可能持續 - 颱風討論

Extreme drought in Texas likely to continue

COLLEGE STATION, TEXAS

Although parts of the nation have experienced record-breaking floods, a severe drought has developed across much of Texas and there may not be much hope of the situation improving anytime soon, said John Nielsen-Gammon, the Texas state climatologist and a professor of meteorology at Texas A&M University.

This is not good news for the state’s beef industry. A total of 6.8 billion pounds of beef was produced from cattle and calves in Texas in 2007, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture National Agricultural Statistics Service. Beef products from the state account for about one-sixth of the nation’s total production.

At least 50% of Texas is suffering from drought conditions, with much of the state in extreme or exceptional drought, Mr. Nielsen-Gammon said. "The hardest-hit areas are in western, central, and southern Texas," he added. "Some areas have received less than a quarter of their normal rainfall for the past six months."

The U.S. Drought Monitor, a joint product of the National Weather Service, the U.S. Dept. of Agriculture and the National Drought Mitigation Center, has designated parts of south-central Texas, from San Antonio west to Columbus, as "D4", a category reserved for drought so severe it only occurs less than 2% of the time at any given location, he noted. A D3 area, corresponding to only a 2-5% frequency of occurrence, now stretches from Del Rio in West Texas to Bryan and Galveston, and down the coast to the
U.S.-Mexico border. Another D3 area covers El Paso and surrounding areas of New Mexico. An additional fragment of D3 and D4 is in extreme northwest Texas.

"Texas had a very wet spring and summer last year, but then the rain just shut down. The past nine months have been among the driest such periods on record," Mr. Nielsen-Gammon said. "The outlook, at least in the short term, is not very promising. Based on preliminary National Weather Service rainfall estimates, the South Texas region is on track to have its driest October-June period ever, since records began in 1895. In south-central Texas, early summer conditions rival the worst drought years ever,
in 1917 and 1971."

Whether this period will turn out to be worse than these depends on the rain that falls over the next two months, he adds. "Many ranchers will find their hay supplies being rapidly depleted if we don't get near-normal summer rainfall," he said.

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