TIME’s coverage of the ever-worsening drought moves from online to off.
drought
How the Drought of 2012 Will Make Your Food More Expensive
They call drought the slow-motion disaster, and for good reason. While earthquakes and volcanoes strike in a moment, and hurricanes unfold over a few days, a drought is simply a day without rain that becomes two days without …
Rising Temperatures and Drought Create Fears of a New Dust Bowl
Triple-digit days. Weeks with little to no rain. Soil crumbling away. Stunted corn stalks. Right now the fertile fields of the U.S. Midwest are experiencing corn-killing weather, with parts of five corn-growing states in the …
Why a Warm Winter Equals Early Wildfires
A wildfire inside the confines of a major city is nothing new in the U.S. It’s a little strange , though, when that city isn’t Los Angeles—constantly threatened by the dry Santa Ana winds of autumn—but rather, New York City. …
Texas Sets Records During the Second Hottest Summer in U.S. History—and the Worst Is Still to Come
Usually when Texas beats Oklahoma it’s something for the Lone Star state to celebrate, like when the Longhorns defeat the Sooners in college football’s storied Red River Rivalry. But not every record is worth holding. This year Texas set a new national record for the hottest months of June through August, besting a record formerly …
Texas Burns as the Rest of the Country Drowns
First Texas was parched—now it’s burning. Still in the grips of its worst drought since the 1950s, Texas is grappling with violent wildfires that have already destroyed more than 1,000 homes and killed two people. While more than 3.6 million acres of Texas have been scorched since the drought tightened last November, over the …
The Endless Drought
I have a piece in the dead-tree TIME this week on the months-long drought in the South—subscribers of the print and digital versions of TIME can access it here. (And the rest of you can go buy a magazine—or at least an iPad app.) The photos that went along with the piece—by the photographer George Steinmetz—are brilliant, …
Breaking the Taboo on “Toilet to Tap”
As I wrote in this week’s Going Green column, the American South is gripped by a terrible dry spell, one lasting for months. In Texas alone, 99.93% of the country is in some state of drought. These are extreme times—and they call for extreme measures. Like drinking urine—sort of.
In a sense, that’s what one Texas town is ready …
El Nino, La Nina, Climate Change and the Horrific Drought in Somalia
As I write this, Somalia is suffering its worst drought in 60 years. The lack of rain—combined with civil unrest and political interference from the al-Qaeda linked al-Shabab group—has produced catastrophic results. Yesterday Nancy Linborg, an official with the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), told a …
Famine in Somalia: When Does the World Decide to Use the ‘F’ Word?
The word ‘famine’ may be a familiar one, but it is not thrown around lightly by the people who decide when there is one. The fact that most of us today probably associate the term with the 1984 crisis in Ethiopia is testament to its exceedingly careful dispensation; to use it too often would dilute its power to command the attention …