NCDC time again
Heard on news: "Parts of Oklahoma are in a worse drought than the Dust Bowl."

This is nearly** always nonsense, but it pays to check.

So: It's NCDC Time, boys and girls!

Here's the official NOAA record for Precipitation, on a 12-month basis up to March of each year. Thus the most recent dot is April 2013 through March 2014. This is the best way of catching the latest data. The "annual" data would have only a partial average of the most recent year.

Top square is the whole state, then the 9 NCDC regions in sequence.



Well? See any record-breakers? Nope. The previous year, 2012-2013, was dry in most parts but nowhere near earlier droughts. The most recent 12-month period shows a definite recovery. It's close to average.

As Polistra has noted before, the 30's were not dramatically dry in Okla. The Dust Bowl was a result of bad farming practices in the 10's and 20's, brought to fruition by a moderate drought. Okla's longest drought on these charts was the 50's, but it didn't create a second Dust Bowl because FDR and Bob Kerr had built lots of dams and ponds to keep things wetter, and because farmers had learned better methods.

= = = = =

**Footnote on Nearly always. The media somehow managed to get one thing right. California's drought this year is off the charts in all parts of Calif. But it's not a trend so far; it's a sudden extreme drop after no particular pattern in the previous few years. If you want to blame it on Evil KKKarbon, you'll have to impute a remarkable degree of Maxwell's Demon intelligence to the actions of a simple atom. Evil KKKarbon plotting in his Evil Overlord Lair: "Ha ha ha! I've been lulling them into inaction! I'll shock them with One Bad Year that's worse than any other year, then I'll hold them hostage for a ransom of One Million Dollars! Ha ha ha!"

Labels: Carbon Cult

  ¶ 3:38 AM