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Dealing With Drought
Fri Sep 05, 2003
Listen in RealAudio 
Hi, I'm Bryan Yeaton for The Weather Notebook. Drought weighs heavily on commentator David
Laskin's mind.
"How's the weather there in Seattle?" a Colorado rancher asked politely, to break the ice,
when I called one sunny spring day to interview him for an article. "Gorgeous," I replied,
trying to disguise my wild frustration that the rainy season was over and five dry months
loomed. On second thought, maybe I should have let my meteorological weirdness hang out. If
anyone could relate to arid frustration, it had to be a rancher from Colorado - whose pastures
were green for the first time in three years thanks to a March blizzard. But even with this
welcome relief, long-term drought persists in much of the inter-mountain west. Just look at
the latest US drought monitor map with those angry red and crimson blobs of extreme and
exceptional drought radiating from Utah.
I know I'm something of a freak on this subject. After all, I have a lawn, not a ranch - so
why does drought bother me so much? Maybe it begins with the lawn. I'm painfully aware of
how much time and money it takes to keep this patch green once the summertime high sets up off
the West Coast. Everything depends in one way or another on the wet stuff that falls from the
sky. When it stops for too long, everything dies a slow death. Weather disaster without the
drama.
Which is why I get so steamed up when the TV weather folks chirp about enjoying all that
fabulous sunshine. What's fabulous is not the umpteenth sunny day in a row, but an inch of
rain coming down slow and steady. I'm sure my rancher friend in Colorado would say amen to
that.
David Laskin is a regular contributor to The Weather Notebook. Out show is produced with
funding from Subaru of America, and The National Science Foundation.
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