Texas and Oklahoma have endured a record-breaking summer of intense heat and lack of rain. The record for the number of days over 100ºF (~38ºC) in North Texas has been shattered. Overall rainfall for the year is down 33%. During the summer, nothing has moved, nothing has grown, the land has parched and every day of wind has brought wildfires. At one period, there were 70 separate wildfires in North and Central Texas alone. Despite the change in the seasons, the risk of fire is still very high and burn bans remain in effect across most of the state.
Water shortage
Because of the lack of rain, lake levels have dropped alarmingly, creating an archeologists’ paradise. Drying lakebeds have revealed ancient Indian burials. In Lake Benbrook, the old railway bed and road from the 1920s now stand high and dry, together with the remains of stores and houses drowned when the lake was created. Lake Texoma on the borders of Texas and Oklahoma has been closed for leisure activities because of depleted water levels and a toxic algae bloom.
In areas reliant on water from artesian wells, the water table has dropped significantly and wells are having to be redrilled, sometimes an extra 200 feet, to reach a depleted water supply.
At last, some rain has fallen, but apart from a significant downpour blessing the area around Possum Kingdom Lake, which has been hit by two enormous wildfires this year, most rain has been patchy and has been soaked up immediately by the desiccated ground with little effect on lake levels. Water bans remain in effect in many areas.
Loss of pasture and crops
Many of the wildfires have fortunately been in sparsely populated rural areas so a relatively small number of buildings have been lost compared to the extent of the conflagrations, but no area of North and Central Texas has been left unaffected by the fires. Thousands upon thousands of acres of grazing land have been burnt and herds of livestock have been caught in the blazes.
The intense summer heat has shriveled crops and grass in the fields and the land itself has dried and cracked. Deep fissures are common even in residential back yards causing an obstacle to livestock, pets and humans alike. In one instance, the local Fire Department spent nearly 45 minutes widening a 2-foot deep fissure to extract a small puppy that had fallen into the mini-canyon. The surrounding ground was so hard that a pneumatic drill was required to break the hard concrete-like earth.
Structural problems
As the Texas clay had dried and baked in the heat, the foundations of houses have been stressed and fractured, causing cracks to appear in walls and floors and significant subsidence. Foundation and house repair companies will be enjoying a boom period for a long time to come.
Roadbeds have also split and subsided creating an urgent need for significant repair work, the cost of which will have to come from increased local taxes.
Livestock shortages
Stock auction houses have been inundated with a glut of livestock being sold early, underweight and at rock-bottom prices creating cheap meat prices, but only temporarily. With local farmers facing significantly higher fodder prices and depleted herds, meat prices are soaring.
Rustlers and raiders return
Cattle rustling, for a long time an uncommon crime, is now becoming a significant problem, but perhaps one of the more unusual effects of the drought is that feed stores are now having to lock up their hay barns. Because the intense drought and heat have shriveled much of North Texas’ hay crop in the fields, large amounts of hay are having to be imported from Oklahoma, and even further afield, where the summer hay crop has not been affected. In North Texas, hay prices have increased two and a half times and with small square bales weighing a few pounds costing $12 and up and the huge round bales costing anything from $130 to $180 a piece, raiding an unlocked feed store or lifting round bales straight from the fields onto a trailer can represent an extremely lucrative night’s work for unscrupulous raiders.
North Texans’ prospects for 2012?
So what can North Texans look forward to in 2012?
The present drought is being blamed on La Niña (El Niño’s dysfunctional cousin), which it is predicted will cause continuing dry conditions possibly even up to 2020. A hard, dry winter is being predicted. Barring torrential downpours from a series of hurricanes and tornados (not the ideal solution!) restoring lake levels, it would appear that there is little relief in sight from the present water shortages. Nor is the high fire risk likely to decrease without significant rain to rehydrate the plants that have survived.
Local taxes will be under pressure to increase substantially to meet the requirements for remedial work on the drought-stressed roads. Insurance rates will go up to offset the cost of claims for structural repairs (and no doubt damage to vehicles from damaged roads).
Meat and dairy products prices will be significantly higher and those switching to a vegetarian diet will encounter higher produce prices with a high proportion of local items no longer available and having to be imported from out of state. Water shortage will even have an effect on oil prices because water is used extensively in the ‘fracking’ process, causing a knock-on effect on all transported goods.
A frigid winter and another very hot and dry summer are on the cards, putting increased pressure on the farming economy and food prices in general. All this is on top of a flatlining mismanaged national economy whose guardians have yet to come up with anything more effective that the ‘tried and true’ method of covering federal deficit by upping the debt ceiling (credit limit) and praying that the moribund economy will suddenly and miraculously break into a sprint – in other words the method that has caused the problem in the first place. You can gauge the level of confidence in the economy when immigrants are starting to return to Mexico for better prospects.
Texans are going to have lots of reasons to wish a “Happy New Year” on December 1st. But wait, there is some light relief in sight. The USA’s answer to the Edinburgh Fringe Festival looms on the horizon – the US Presidential elections with outbreaks of political foot in mouth disease all over the place and intense discussion of how far a blimp must cut through the paper to qualify as a vote – depending on whom the vote is for of course. Oh yes, much fiddling will be going on while Rome burns.
Martin Cross - A translator, former chef and marketeer, currently disabled. I write articles on food,, travel, politics, religion and technology.
