It wasn't the first time day turned into night. The people stood still, looking at the horizon, squinting their eyes, their shoulders already weary form what was about to come. They quickly gathered their children together and brought them inside, closing the doors behind them and shutting all the windows tightly. As the cloud moved closer, the air became heavy with stifling heat, and breathing was hampered. The dust storm was here, and those caught outside sought shelter wherever possible, in cars, in buildings, and under bridges. Clothing was pulled up to protect eyes and noses from the stinging, flying dust, and lips were pinched closed to keep the fine powder out of lungs. There was nothing to do but huddle... huddle, sweat, weep and wait it out as one dried-out field after another blew through the city.
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This may sound like America in the 1930's, but it isn’t. It's Phoenix, Arizona, 2011, and it has had 3 large dust storms hit in the last 6 weeks. Dust storms aren’t unusual for this part of the country, but the sheer size and power of these storms are.
July 5th was the worst when a wall of dust a mile high slammed into the city, knocking out power to over 10,000 people. What remained was a layer of dust resting on every surface that took days and weeks to clean up. July 18th saw a cloud of dust 3/4 of a mile high, and the dust wall of August 19th almost reached 1/5th of a mile and traveled 50 miles.
Is this a preview of what to expect? Droughts across the country suggest it is. Currently there are Extreme to Exceptional drought conditions in Texas, Oklahoma, Georgia, Louisiana, New Mexico, Arizona, and parts of Arkansas and Colorado. Outside of these hardest hit states, are many others that are in various stages of drought from moderate to severe. (http://droughtmonitor.unl.edu/)
Unfortunately, this isn’t unique to the United States, it’s happening all around the world. According to the Global Drought Monitor (http://drought.mssl.ucl.ac.uk/drought.html), over 68,000,000 people are currently living under Exceptional drought conditions, with close to 6,000,000 of them living right here in the United States. That’s a lot of people living without enough water. It’s also represents a huge area that doesn’t have enough water to irrigate crops.
It would be nice to offer solutions at this point, but there are none. Everybody already knows the “dos and don’ts” about wasting water, so all that’s left is adaptation and staying in a constant state of awareness about the situation. And if that’s all there is to do, then let’s do it. Adapt by installing water-harvesting systems and by putting in backyard vegetable gardens to take up the slack of the anticipated food shortages. Keep your eyes open, your taps closed and your families and friends near. The 1930’s were a mere preview of what’s to come, so let’s learn from it and adapt.
Think about it.
http://www.freep.com/article/20110820/NEWS07/108200316/Massive-wall-dust-swallows-Phoenix-area-again
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