Drought Devastates U.S.
Drought has engulfed nearly a third of the United States, which this summer may lead some of the worst water shortages in years.
It?s still far short of the 1930s Dust Bowl, when up to 70 percent of the country had no rain. However, unless there?s a rainy spring, some places in the East may face summer water problems as bad as the droughts of the 1960s, according to Harry Lins, a drought specialist at the U.S. Geological Survey.
Drought is usually defined as 70 percent of normal rain or snow for three months straight. Drought conditions now run in two vast Eastern and Western strips, each hundreds of miles across, from Maine to Georgia and Montana to Texas, according to the U.S. Drought Monitor map.
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