Los Angeles Times
March 29, 2013

When snow surveyors headed into the Sierra Nevada on Thursday for the most important measurement of the season, they found only about half the snowpack that is normal for the date.

It could have been a lot worse — considering that the last three months in California have been the driest of any January-through-March period on record, going back to 1895.

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KQED
March 7, 2013

This winter is shaping up to be among the Bay Area’s driest on record, but scientists are weighing the odds of a thousand-year drought.

Some researchers may have found one in ancient times — something on the order of 1800 to 2800 years ago.

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Western Farm Press
October 25, 2012

The U.S. Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) efforts to help producers rebound from drought have touched more than one million acres of farmland across the country as nearly 2,000 producers took advantage of conservation funding targeted to drought-stricken areas by USDA’s Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS). NRCS made more than $27 million available to farmers and ranchers to make conservation improvements, spurring recovery and ensuring lands are more drought resistant in the future.

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Reuters
By Alyce Hinton
July 27, 2011

The drought and extreme heat wreaking havoc across the U.S. farm belt is killing fish by the thousands in lakes and rivers and could pose a problem to migrating ducks and other waterfowl if it stretches into the fall, officials said.

Authorities are tallying up the losses which could run into the millions of dollar as the worst drought in 56 years expands, devastating the corn and soybean crops and forcing ranchers to cull their herds due to scorched pasture.

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The New York Times
By Felicity Barringer
July 20, 2012

Like the actors in “A Chorus Line,” different regions of the United States have had their moments in the spotlight as droughts gave them stories to tell. Last year it was the Deep South and especially Texas and Oklahoma.

As a 50-year chart by my colleagues Haeyoun Park and Kevin Quealy reflects, this year unusually large swaths of the country, from New England through the Midwest and into the Plains, are watching crops droop.

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NPR
By Mark Memmott
July 17, 2012

With about 55 percent of the continental U.S. suffering from “moderate to extreme drought” conditions the nation is withering under conditions that haven’t been this bad since 1956, according to a new report from National Climatic Data Center.

And this “worst-in-a-generation drought from Indiana to Arkansas to California is damaging crops and rural economies and threatening to drive food prices to record levels,” Bloomberg News warns.

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