Texas drought hurting, leading to prayer

To say it’s dry right now is akin to saying Charlie Sheen seems unstable.

Neither description does enough to get the point across. By most accounts Texas is in its worst drought since 1917. Unfortunately, there are precious few people left from 1917 to show us the way through this heightening problem.

Talk to the people who have been around a few years and they will talk about the 1955 drought, now weather people are telling us we are way past that.

So far the state, and the region, is receiving less than 50 percent of normal rainfall, with many areas receiving approximately 10 percent of normal rainfall. Meteorologists blame the weather pattern, which has seen the storm-carrying jet stream stay north of Texas, on the La Niña phenomenon — a cold patch of water in the Pacific Ocean.

The effects on the state are crippling, now for agriculture and soon for everybody else.

As of April 12, just over 10 percent of the state is in the severest of the drought conditions, considered exceptional, with parts of Houston County and Central and East Texas included in information released from the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the National Weather Service. Almost 61 percent of the state is in the “extreme” drought category.

There is no part of the state considered to be in normal conditions.

Water is something most of us take for granted. We turn on the tap and expect the life-giving liquid to come out in a flowing stream; without ever giving a thought to how precious a resource water truly is.

Ask a farmer or rancher this year how important water is. See the grimace on their face when hay prices reach $100 a bale or more coupled with diesel over $4 per gallon. Go outside of East Texas and ask a Texas farmer how hard it is to make a crop without rain — it can’t be done. Prices for food stocks are already through the roof and the specter of a series of failed crops from Texas, a leading agriculture producer in the nation, could add considerably to grocery bills.

Fires are the other costs. As of Tuesday over a million acres of land in Texas has gone up in flames with hundreds of homes included. Such devastating fires are not something most Texans are used to as most of us are used to watching flames engulf California every year, now we are seeing it play out here every night on the news.

Unfortunately there is no immediate relief on the way as continued hot and dry conditions are expected, along with strong winds.

Those not in agriculture will soon get an awakening as well — and not just from higher grocery prices. Water rationing is a tool water suppliers can use to make sure there is enough water to go round for everybody. Folks can still shower and drink all the water they want, they just may be asked not to water the lawn and wash the car quite as often — a minor inconvenience for some and a tragedy for others.

The doom and gloom, hopefully, is only temporary and there are things everybody can due to blunt the effects of the drought. The first thing is to be responsible for water usage and understand it is a precious resource. Work to conserve water at home and design a yard landscape that doesn’t require copious amounts of water — like maybe a rock garden.

Agriculture producers may have to resort to more painful options, such as major herd reductions for cattle producers and the abandoning of crops for farmers.

Hopefully, with a lot of prayer, the rains will come again soon.