Reflections on the Drought

I took the following picture a few weeks ago on my way home from work.  This pond and these trees are located on the property of Eagle Heights Baptist Church at the corner of Jardot and Lakeview.  I drive by there twice a day.

It would have been a perfect landscape picture had there not been an exposed sewer pipe in the water to the left of the tree.  We had no idea the pipe was there until this summer's drought when, as the water in the pond evaporated, it gradually began to appear.  The first clue I had that it was there was I would see what looked like a "turtle train".  There would be 10 to 12 turtles lined up on it sunning themselves.   At first you could not see the pipe, just the turtles.  But, it gradually rose out of the water as the summer went along.

In my previous post, I mentioned the Oklahoma Mesonet website.  Later I had the opportunity to dig deeper into the site and found a map of the state showing the drought areas.

http://climate.ok.gov/index.php/climate/map/u.s._drought_monitor_oklahoma/oklahoma_south-central_u.s

This shows our part of the state in the "severe" drought area.  Most of western Oklahoma is in the "extreme" drought area.  But, there is even an area in the panhandle that is classified as "exceptional".  My worry over this is exacerbated due to the fact that I read a book last fall titled "The Worst Hard Time" by Timothy Egan.  It is the story of those people who survived the Dust Bowl in this area of the United States.  The troubling fact brought out in this book is that the drought occurring during the Dust Bowl was not just a 1 - 2 year event.  It lasted 7 years!

The book also mentions that many of the people who suffered through those years were drawn to the area by unscrupulous businessmen that scooped up large tracks of prairie land at cheap prices and advertised them as being ideal "farmland".  They made the wild claim that whenever large areas of prairie sod were plowed up and planted, it would actually change the weather patterns and bring more rain to the area!  They asserted that this was a proven scientific fact.

It is difficult for us these days to believe people could be suckered into believing that kind of thing.  But, I suppose people were desperate to own land.  We've come a long way since those times.  And, our land management practices are much better at conserving the top soil.  But, still, it is worrisome to think that we might be in for more years like this last one.