Background
How Long Has the Current Drought Been Going On?
Texas is currently experiencing a severe drought, and has been for over a year. The drought began in October 2010 and continued through the winter, though conditions have improved greatly in recent months. But the drought really intensified in the middle of 2011. The months from March through May, and then June through August all set records for low rainfall. The high temperatures over the summer months increased evaporation, further lowering river and lake levels.
We’re far from the finish line, but after an unexpectedly wet winter in much of the state, the record single-year drought shows continued signs of abating. As of April 12, over 17 percent of the state is completely drought-free. At the opposite end, 14 percent of the state is still in “exceptional” drought, the worst stage of drought. Compare that to the peak of the drought, when 88 percent of Texas was in the “exceptional” stage.
Dallas-Fort Worth is drought-free, as is Houston. (They’re still in the “abnormally dry” category or higher, however.) Austin, El Paso and San Antonio are now in the lightest stage of drought. But the situation in West Texas continues to be dry.
As the levels of drought drop across Central, North and East Texas, water restrictions are being lifted. Kyle, Round Rock, and several cities in North Texas have eased restrictions recently. But not everyone is moving in that direction. Dallas has enacted permanent watering restrictions, drought or not.
2011 was the driest year ever for Texas, with an average of only 14.8 inches of rain. The only comparable drought occurred during the drought of record during the 1950s, but no single year during that drought was as dry as 2011.
What Caused the Drought?
The main culprit was La Niña, a weather pattern where the surface temperatures are cooler in the Pacific. This in turn creates drier, warmer weather in the southern U.S. (You may also know her counterpart, El Niño, which generally has the opposite effect.) La Niña sticks around for a year, sometimes longer, and tends to return once every few years. (The last La Niña was in 2007, but it was a much lighter one.)
The National Weather Service says that a “majority of models predict La Niña to weaken through the rest of the Northern Hemisphere winter 2011-12, and then to dissipate during the spring 2012.”
But they also say they “expect La Niña impacts to continue even as the episode weakens.” So during the next few months, it’s likely to be drier-than-average in the south. Victor Murphy, with the National Weather Service at their Southern Region Headquarters in Fort Worth, Texas, says that the longer it takes La Niña to leave, the less rain Texas gets. “I would say for the springtime, which is our main time of year for getting rainfall across Texas, we’re more likely than not to see below normal precipitation,” he says.
Maps of the Drought
The National Drought Monitor releases an updated map of the drought each week. The maps below show how the drought has progressed, beginning in October 2010 to what could arguably be the peak of the drought, the first week of October 2011, and then to the first week of February 2012:
What Are the Effects of the Drought?
The drought has helped fuel wildfires, ruined crops and put a real strain on the state’s electric grid.
Dry conditions fueled a series of wildfires across the state in early September. The most devastating, the Bastrop Complex Fire in Bastrop County, scorched over 34,000 acres and destroyed more than 1,300 homes.
The situation reached a new level of urgency in late January of the following year when wells in the town of Spicewood Beach, Texas officially ran out of water. Some 1,100 residents now depend on tanker trucks to deliver water to the town’s storage tank. The Lower Colorado River Authority (LCRA) owns the water system and is overseeing the emergency water operation. The agency anticipates that they could need to truck in water for six to eight months as they look for a long-term solution.
The drought has affected a wide-range of industries in Texas. Economists estimate that the drought has cost farmers and ranchers upwards of $5.2 billion. Some farmers and ranchers have rented or leased parts of their properties to recreational hunters in an attempt to make up some of their lost profits. The price of hay has increased by 200% since the drought began. Since the price of feeding cattle has skyrocketed, ranchers are culling their herds, selling off large numbers of cattle in auctions to out-of-state buyers. Farmers are in similarly dire straits. Corn outputs fell by 40% in 2011 and peanut production is down as well. The lack of crops has created conditions forsevere dust storms across the western part of the state. Rice farmers may soon feel the strain of dwindling water resources. If combined lake levels fall to 600,000, the LCRA will cut off water supplies to farmers in Matagorda, Wharton and Colorado counties as soon as this January.
Officials from ERCOT are also concerned. Nuclear, coal, and natural gas energy production all require large amounts of fresh water to cool equipment. High energy usage and scorching temperatures caused ERCOT to close one factory overnight during the height of the summer’s heat. Officials worry that another spring and summer with low rainfall could mean the closure of some power plants.
When Will the Drought End?
Even though the previous winter was wet, Raymond Slade, a hydrologist who follows water issues in Texas, isn’t optimistic about the overall trend. “It’s projected it could get worse,” he says. “We may have below what’s been normal rainfall, could be below for the next few years.”
Slade’s pessimism stems from the state’s unique hydrology. “Very little water enters this state from outside of the state, and that’s only on the Rio Grande,” he says. “All other rivers originate from in this state, so when we don’t have rain, this state is the one that suffers.”
Slade warns that even though things are green now in much of the state, the drought’s effects linger. “Unfortunately the lakes are still not full across the state and the streams are still not back to normal,” he says. “So this drought continues as far as water availability.”
Estimates on when the drought will end completely vary widely. State Meteorologist George Bomar hopes the hot and dry La Nina weather cycle will abate after the spring. He says Texas suffered the worst drought in recorded state history in 2011 and a third La Nina cycle seems unlikely. Near-normal rainfall should return for the summer.
But what are the odds of La Niña coming back this fall and extending the drought even further? When La Niña showed up in the summer of 2010, she overstayed her welcome, returning the very next year for back-to-back La Niñas, which became a major factor in the drought. “In fact, it was the second strongest La Niña on record, and that was a strong contributor, perhaps a main contributor to the record-setting drought conditions we’ve had in Texas,” Murphy of the National Weather Service says.
So while this was a “double-dipping” La Niña, as Murphy says, what are the chances of a threepeat? History would tell us the odds are 50/50. In five out of the last ten two-year La Niñas, they were followed by a third year of the pattern. Texas state climatologist John Nielsen-Gammon told StateImpact Texas last month that there’s “no guarantee” that won’t happen this time, which would take the record single-year drought into even more extreme territory.
What to expect for the future:
A new report gives us the opportunity to look at some of the science behind the drought that affected every Texan, and what may lie ahead in the future.
At a meeting of the board of the Lower Colorado River Authority (LCRA) in mid-February, Bob Rose, LCRA’s meteorologist, presented a report on the drought and his forecasts for the months ahead.
Rose said that many models now predict that La Niña will leave completely by the end of the spring. And a weakening La Niña has been responsible for above-average rains this winter that have proved crucial in the lessening of the drought. But many parts of the state still need another foot or more of rain to get out of the drought. Rose expects more rains to come, and a summer “not as hot or as dry as last year.”
With no definitive end in sight, Texas lawmakers are looking towards ways to alleviate the drought. The Barton Springs Edwards Aquifer Conservation District has plans to create a desalination plant to be able to make use of brackish groundwater. El Paso already boasts the world’s largest inland desalination plant. This past legislative session, lawmakers passed a bill requiring all future state buildings to have a rainwater collection system. There is also interest in expanding rainwater harvesting on private homes. Lieutenant Governor David Dewhurst has announced the Texas State Senate will meet in committees to discuss the drought’s impact on the state.
The drought, the extreme heat and the fires that came with it have made this an historic year for Texas. And it will leave a mark that will be felt long after the drought is over: trees will continue to die from stress, roads will continue to break apart, and food prices will continue to fluctuate.
