Dealing With Drought

Much of the country is dealing with drought conditions but nowhere has been hit worse than right here in West Texas. In all of 2011 Odessa has received .16 of an inch of rain -- yes, 16 100ths of an inch of rain in seven months (and we had not gotten much precipitation before that -- 13 or so inches in 2010, which was not an outlier one way or the other). The fact that it has been over 100 degrees virtually every day for weeks on end has not helped. The region is parched. Lawns, if they still exist, are beyond relief for anyone adhering to the watering restrictions (many, many people are not adhering to those restrictions because people are selfish pricks).

This is the real danger of the potential devastation of climate change. It also reveals the possibilities of a serious resource scarcity that has the capacity to undermine not only American, but global stability. If you want to imagine a war of all against all, imagine if most of Texas finds that its access to water has been severely restricted.

There will be a certain irony in Texas scrambling to access potable water given that folks in this state have often been fond of festooning their vehicles with bumper stickers reading "Burn more oil and freeze a Yankee." Well, Tex, northerners can use electric heat or fire up the wood stoves. Good luck drinking your precious unrefined oil. Of course then I remember: I live in Texas now.

In any case, it's hot as hell and dry as a bone in Odessa. And while there have been hints of relief coming -- it was banner news in the Odessa American when West Odessa, but not the rest of the city, got rain last night -- we will believe it when we're wet.

Mighty Mt. Washington

People from out west, and especially the Rocky Mountain region, look scornfully at mountains in the east coast. And when it comes to scale, it is true, that nothing out east can compare with even modest peaks in, say, Colorado. But as this New York Times feature reminds us all, New Hampshire's Mt. Washington might seem unimpressive compared to its western brethren, the northeast's highest peak is bad ass when it comes to weather conditions, which dwarf the mountains of the Rockies in severity as surely as those mountains dwarf Mt. Washington in sheer altitude.

Winter Wonderland

The Permian Basin is a winter wonderland, a veritable Currier & Ives painting come to life. Yesterday and last night we received what might be as much as an inch of snow, blanketing the region and throwing it into chaos. Schools, including the university, are closed. Highways and many major roads are shut down. It is a war of all against all out there. Some have warned us to stock up on provisions if things clear up because there might be more snow to come.

Obviously I find all of this amusing. Not a soul in New England would pay so much as one whit of attention to all of what they would probably call glorified flurries, but here it really is an enormously big deal. My favorite irony in all of this is that it reveals once again that the region of the country that most worships NASCAR (And that extends from El Paso to Norfolk and everything south) produces the worst drivers in the country under clear conditions. Forget about going out there now, with snow on the ground and the threat of more. Under these conditions people drive like they are experiencing grand mal seizures while being tasered.

Time to start a fire.