Here’s the effect of one entire year of drought in California, going from February 15, 2013, to February 16, 2014, as seen from NASA’s Terra satellite. It’s really scary to see the land die like this—especially after you read what NASA has to say about it.
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California grows a mind-boggling amount of the nation’s produce: 99 percent of artichokes, 97 percent of kiwis, 97 percent of plums, 95 percent of celery, and on and on. That’s why the record-breaking drought (yes, it’s finally raining—no, it won’t help much!) can affect your grocery bill, even if you live nowhere near California. But with almonds—the state’s most lucrative agricultural export—the effect could reverberate for years.
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Beijing’s smog, the West’s drought, Alaska’s avalanche, and everybody’s cigarettes are part of this week’s landscape reads.
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The ongoing drought in the U.S. west and mountain region is leading to the surprise reappearance of historical artifacts, including entire towns and villages emerging from the sand and muck left behind by drying reservoirs.
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Starchitects don’t build ’em like they used to—and now one’s getting sued for it. Chris Christie remains in troubled waters over a bridge. And if you thought the Polar Vortex was bad, how about the looming Emergency Drought? It’s all this week in What’s Ruining Our Cities.
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Just two weeks after state officials declared 2013 the driest year in California history, a fast-moving wildfire has burned 1,700 acres northeast of Los Angeles, according to the Los Angeles Times. In winter. When it’s usually raining.
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California’s running out of water. This year’s record-breaking drought—coming after two already dry years—has the state scrambling for the liquid stuff. Plans to seed clouds for extra snowfall are already in place. But do we really require storm clouds for water? Why not use fog?
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A 1982 plan to build a nearly 400-mile long artificial river across Kansas—an infrastructural super-project that could cost as much as $12 billion—is back on the table, according to the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. Who said Big Government is bad—especially when it brings thirsty Red States their water? “We’ve got a tremendous amount of water in the east and only a small fraction of it is usable to Kansas at this point," the executive director of the SW Kansas Groundwater Management District told the Salina Journal.
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Watching the animation above, it’s hard not to get goosebumps when the the clock hits 2012 and the whole United States goes red. That’s what it looks like from space when the Earth is parched.
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