Mountains Of Dust

The GOP doesn’t create droughts. I know that every time we have a major disaster in the economy and widespread drought the GOP seems to be in charge, but it’s just a coincidence. They could have helped by doing something constructive about greenhouse gases a long time ago, but they don’t believe in science or facts, so you can’t really blame them because mental incompetence is a valid defense.

Remember, the last time it was a “dust bowl”, out on the plains, and this time it’s the hills in the South. It’s different.

This time little towns are buying water from neighboring states: Drought-Ravaged Town Trucks In Water

The severe drought tightening like a vise across the Southeast has threatened the water supply of cities large and small, sending politicians scrambling for solutions. But Orme, about 40 miles west of Chattanooga and 150 miles northwest of Atlanta, is a town where the worst-case scenario has already come to pass: The water has run out.

The mighty waterfall that fed the mountain hamlet has been reduced to a trickle, and now the creek running through the center of town is dry.

Three days a week, the volunteer fire chief hops in a 1961 fire truck at 5:30 a.m. – before the school bus blocks the narrow road – and drives a few miles to an Alabama fire hydrant. He meets with another truck from nearby New Hope, Ala. The two drivers make about a dozen runs back and forth, hauling about 20,000 gallons of water from the hydrant to Orme’s tank.

The old weather patterns no longer work. While people talk about global warming, and that is a big part of the problem, the warming changes the major currents in the oceans and the atmosphere, so when and where there is rainfall has changed. This is climate change.