Summary: The climate alarmists described the Texas drought in extreme terms, as the New Normal. Readers of the FM website saw the other side of the news — the science side — in Key facts about the drought that’s reshaping Texas. Now we see what looks like the end of the story. It’s a pleasant ending for everybody — excerpt for the alarmists (wrong, again). {1st of 2 posts today.}

Texas was so over

Here are a few typical remarks about the Texas drought; red emphasis added.

John Nielsen-Gammon (Texas state climatologist and prof atmospheric sciences, Texas A&M): “This drought has almost singlehandedly put an end to the trend of reduced drought frequency and intensity that Texas had been experiencing. … The [continuing] drought of 2011–20xx has taught us something we didn’t know: Rather than being a thing of the past, Texas drought can be worse than we imagined.” {Texas Climate News, 12 October 2013}

“Texas Climate News sought out the state’s finest climatologists, oceanographers and public-policy experts. If nothing else, their responses make clear that the Lone Star State is headed for a new normal. Pretending it isn’t happening is not a viable option.” {Dallas Observer, 14 October 2013}

“Fear in a Handful Of Dust” by Ted Genoways, The New Republic: “Climate change is making the Texas panhandle, birthplace of the state’s iconic Longhorn, too hot and dry to raise beef. … environmental activists and reporters began to ask whether “drought” — a temporary weather pattern — was really the right term for what was happening in the state, or whether “desertification” was more appropriate. … ‘If climate change is the real deal then the human race as we know it is over’.”

That was then. This is now.

On 22 May 2015 the Washington Post headlined that “Texas prayed for drought-busting rain four years ago. It finally came.” Climate Central explains in detail…

“I think the Texas drought is pretty much all but over,” Victor Murphy, climate services program manager for the National Weather Service’s Southern Region, said during a press teleconference. … The drought that hit Texas and Oklahoma began in 2010 with months upon months of hot, dry weather. It reached its nadir in 2011 when the entire area of both states was mired in drought. In October of that year, nearly three quarters of Texas and 60 percent of Oklahoma was in exceptional drought, the worst category recognized by the U.S. Drought Monitor. Both states have seen fits and starts of improvement since that low point, but it is the rains over the past few weeks that have sounded the drought’s death knell. Most areas of Texas have seen more than 200% of their normal precipitation over the past 60 days, recharging reservoirs and bringing moisture back into baked soils. The rains brought more than 3 trillion gallons of water into Texas reservoirs, Murphy said, most of which are nearly completely full, though some are still struggling.

The scientists were right. This is good news for Texas! But they’re still draining their aquifers. Eventually they’ll run dry and American agriculture will change.



Updates

(a) “Visualized: How the insane amount of rain in Texas could turn Rhode Island into a lake” by the WonkBlog of the Washington Post, 27 May 2015 — Excerpt…

It’s hard to overstate the magnitude of the flooding that’s hit Texas recently. The Memorial Day weekend of heavy rain has capped off a month where some areas of the state have seen more than 20 inches of rain fall. More rain is in the forecast. It’s difficult to comprehend the ridiculous amounts of water that have fallen in such a short time in a state that, until recently, had been in the grip of a historic drought. But one place to start would be to look at reservoir levels in the state. In the past 30 days, Texas reservoirs have gone from being 73% full to 82% full, according to data maintained by the Texas Water Development board.

(b) The drought was climate change. The rains are climate change. Business as usual for the alarmists. A typical example: “Texas Was In a Horrible Drought Last Year. Now It’s Flooded. What Gives?“.

(c) More slowly than the knew-jerks of alarmists, climate scientists describe these events. Like this from NASA: “El Niño at Play as Source of More Intense Regional U.S. Wintertime Storms“. It makes only one reference to climate change…

Schubert cautions against directly linking a particular heavy storm event to El Niño with absolute certainty. “This study is really about the causes for the changes in probability that you’ll have stronger storms, not about the causes of individual storms,” he said. For that matter, Schubert also discourages linking a particularly intense storm to global warming with complete certainty.

For More Information

See the 1993 classic book forecasting our present problems Cadillac Desert: The American West and Its Disappearing Water . For a down to earth look at climate change see The Time It Never Rained by Elmer Kelton (1973), a novel describing the 1905s drought that re-shaped Texas as crops shriveled and livestock died.

If you liked this post, like us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter. See these Reference Pages for other posts about climate on the FM sites: The keys to understanding climate change and My posts about climate change. Also, see these posts about droughts:

The Hydro-Illogical Cycle

From the SPEI website…