‘Driest Year Ever’ Continues In N.M. “We’re well on track for this being the driest year ever in New Mexico,” Ed Polasko, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Albuquerque, told the group. Polasko’s grim statement followed his listing of dozens of communities around New Mexico that have fallen inches behind in their precipitation. Some of the biggest precipitation deficits are along the Middle and Lower Rio Grande, but he also pointed to Carlsbad and Tatum in southeastern New Mexico, which have missed out on anywhere from six to 10 inches of their normal annual precipitation. Las Cruces and Deming are also behind. Nearly every corner of New Mexico has been affected by drought this year, and the conditions are so bad that about two-thirds of the state have been classified as extreme and exceptional – the two worst levels of drought. This summer was one of the driest on record and that helped compound a problem that has been brewing since last fall and winter, when storms brought little more than freezing temperatures to New Mexico. The La Niña weather pattern that repelled moisture from much of the state was to blame. The bad news is that La Niña seems to be rearing its head once more, Polasko said...
Arizona drought conditions could deepen A dry winter and a weak monsoon fueled record wildfires, record heat and a succession of dust storms that played like a broken record, pushing Arizona deeper into a drought that has persisted since 1999. Now, forecasters say La Niña, the ocean force responsible for the scant snowfall in Arizona's high country last year, has returned for an encore and could set the stage for even drier conditions next year. The latest weekly survey by the National Drought Mitigation Center in Lincoln, Neb., shows all of Arizona in some degree of drought, from abnormally dry conditions in the state's western third to pockets of extreme drought on the Navajo Reservation and extreme and exceptional drought in the southeastern corner of the state. A winter forecast, meanwhile, by the Climate Prediction Center suggests little will change on the survey's drought map in the coming months. The odds favor drier, warmer weather over most of Arizona through December...
Drought helps triple livestock sales at auction More than 3,000 head of cattle passed through the auction ring Thursday and Friday during a second consecutive week of two-day sales at San Angelo's Producers Livestock Auction. Sales receipts for cattle and sheep have tripled over a four-month period when compared with a year ago, all because of the drought, said Benny Cox, auction sheep sales manager. "A total of 67,920 head of cattle sold from May through August compared to 25,282 for the same time period last year," Benny told me Thursday. "In other words, a total of 42,638 head more sold for those four months in 2011 than in 2010." On the sheep side, 175,100 head sold from May through August compared with 122.023 for the same time period last year, a difference of 53,077...
Amid drought, Texas ranches shipping cattle to other states This week, rancher Donnell Brown will do something he never thought his family's spread would consider. The 106-year-old R.A. Brown Ranch will ship hundreds of beef cows, bred heifers and bulls 1,300 miles to Montana. Like a latter-day version of the 19th-century cattle drives by Charles Goodnight and Jesse Chisholm, tens of thousands of dogies are moving north. But these are not lean longhorn steers hoofing it across the Red River under the watchful eyes of saddle-sore, dollar-a-day cowboys and ending up at a slaughterhouse gate. Rather, they are expensive breeding stock being driven in heavy cattle trailers at a trucking rate of $3.75 a mile toward rain-fed pastures. Many may eventually return to Texas. Dwindling water supplies and parched range caused by the state's devastating drought are forcing Brown and such large, storied ranches as the Spade, Moorhouse, Swenson and the 6666 to move a good portion of their seed stock...
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