U.S. Water Woes – Northeast
5 hours ago Kip Hansen 7 Comments
Guest Essay by Kip Hansen — 18 December 2024 — 2000 words
For the last couple of months, the press in the United States has been hammering on about drought conditions, in front page stories such as:
In a Record, All but Two U.S. States Are in Drought
and
What’s Going On in This Graph? | Drought
All of these claims about drought are based on the U.S. Drought Monitor, which itself is mostly just a metric based on rainfall – above or below normal.
When one digs down to discover “what’s going on…?” one discovers that the fact is that October 2024 was a dry month across most of the country, and it followed on September, which was likewise a bit less rainy than “normal”. That’s it, the whole story.
What results from that is a US Drought Monitor graphic, touted far and wide, that looked like this:
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2024/12/17/u-s-water-woes-northeast/