Whether the dry spell will be prolonged such as the seven-year drought in the 1950s has yet to be determined, although meteorologists with the National Weather Service are predicting dry weather through March, Miller said.
A drought is defined as a period of abnormally dry weather sufficiently prolonged for the lack of water to cause serious hydrologic imbalance in the affected area, Miller said.
In easier to understand terms, a drought is a period of unusually persistent dry weather that persists long enough to cause serious problems such as crop damage and/or water supply shortages.
Rain falls during a drought, but the quantity is abnormally low, he said. The severity of the drought depends upon the degree of moisture deficiency, the duration and the size of the affected area, Miller said.
Dirk Aaron, Texas AgriLife Extension Agent in Bell County, said farm ponds are drying up in spite of big rainfall events in April and May, which produced a great deal of runoff.
“We haven’t had anything measurable since May, so it puts us in severe drought conditions and couple that with the fact that we have guys that are cow-calf operators that have no grass left and they are spending lots of money on hay or feed,” Aaron said. “It’s pretty tough conditions. I think it’s widespread.”
Another source of bad news is the 2009 Farmer’s Almanac, Aaron said, which “predicts continued dry and droughty conditions for this area of the country.”
In Texas, the climate is best described as a perpetual drought interrupted by intermittent flooding, said Jon Gersbach, Texas AgriLife Extension Agent in Milam County. “It seems we are always preparing for the next drought. We have not gotten the rainfall when we needed it. It looks like we are in a tremendous drought.”
Some regions of the county received average rainfall, while the northern area monitored by the Blackland Research Center in Temple shows about 10 inches less than amounts recorded in Cameron.
“I have heard a lot of people this year comment that they have had ponds that never went dry,” Gersbach said. “It’s a scary thing to sit there and look at what next year is going to be for farmers.”
Landmark droughts occurred in the 1930s, when 50 million acres became known as the Dust Bowl; in the 1950s; and in California in 1970; but the worst drought in 50 years occurred in the long hot summer of 1988 that affected 35 states. That year, rainfall was 50 percent to 85 percent below normal.
Meteorologists determine the onset and the end of a drought by carefully monitoring meteorological and hydrological variables such as precipitation patterns, soil moisture and stream flow. To do this, meteorologists make use of various indices that show deficits in precipitation over periods of time.
National and state meteorologists reported that El Nino - the warming of Pacific Ocean water that impacts weather in North America - will remain neutral into early 2009.
