With Mt Washington currently 5.12” shy of its average monthly rainfall for the month of June in spite of significant rains the past couple days (check out our data for the month of June here), much of the state of New Hampshire has been experiencing moderate drought over the course of the past couple months, and as a result, I spent my first week on the summit reflecting on this climatological state as it pertains to human culture and development across the globe.

 

For me, perhaps the most famous dry spell that comes to mind is the famous dust bowl era of the 1930s. Enhanced by poor agricultural practices, multiple years of drought led to dust storms, destruction of agriculture, and an estimated 500,000 displaced Americans. Coinciding with the great depression, the dust bowl has seemingly imprinted itself on the American consciousness, eventually perpetuating itself into the cultural sphere, where it became immortalized in the novels of John Steinbeck, the songs of Woody Guthrie, and the photographs of Dorothea Lange.

 

 

Now, as I glance at the most recent map put out by the United States Drought Monitor, I check the region intersected by the states of New Mexico, Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas, and Colorado, and I can’t help but notice that the states that once endured the droughts of the dust bowl era are the same ones negotiating a severe drought right now.

 For me, it is striking to realize that certain areas are disproportionately prone to the destructive effects of severe drought. When John Steinbeck wrote The Grapes of Wrath, amongst other novels set in this era, it seemed to me that he was telling the story of a group of people living on the margin, one where the climate and the structured economy were pitted against them. As I thought more about the history of drought, I realized that extreme events in weather and climate of course affect different groups of people disproportionately.

As we move forward in time, I can’t help but wonder about the impacts of these types of phenomena and what regions are more prone to climatic events in a dynamic world. After perusing the IPCC special report on global warming of 1.5°C , long term precipitation trends in lieu of climate change are hardly straightforward, and effects vary regionally.