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LLANO, Tex. — When the people who run this small town in Central Texas put up hand-painted signs reading “No watering” in bold red letters, they really mean it.

Hundreds of lawns are dying in the 100-degree heat here, turning straw-colored and crunchy. The drought that has gripped much of Texas has forced Llano to adopt some of the toughest mandatory water restrictions in the state. Residents are prohibited from watering their lawns except for once a week early in the morning and late at night. The filling of swimming pools, the washing of cars parked outside homes, the use of automatic or detachable sprinklers — all have been banned since June, by order of the City Council.

Government has always had a hard time telling Texans how to live. But the ban on most types of outdoor watering has been embraced by people in Llano, where a kind of World War II-era rationing spirit has become a way of life.

This has been the season of extremes in Texas — too much fire and too little water. As towns and cities throughout the state have been coping with the extreme drought, dozens of wildfires that erupted over the Labor Day weekend continued to burn on Tuesday, destroying hundreds of homes and forcing thousands of people to evacuate.

To ease the drought-related strain on Llano’s water system, Bryan Miiller, the owner of a meat-processing company, cut back his production schedule to four days a week from five, reducing the water he uses to clean the equipment and work areas, though he was not required to do so under the restrictions. Restaurants are serving water only if a patron requests it, and a few residents and businesses, including local car washes, have gone through the trouble and expense of trucking in water from outside the city or from private wells. Terry Mikulenka, manager of the city-owned 18-hole golf course, has been spraying treated sewer water on the greens. One couple has been irrigating their backyard trees and shrubs with the run-off from their washing machine and the water they use to wash their dishes and take a shower, a conservation technique numerous other residents are doing as well.

“I think all of us are making sacrifices,” said the city manager, Finley deGraffenried. “People are changing their ways, changing their habits.”

In many ways, the drought that has devastated Texas has been measured on an epic scale. It is the worst one-year drought in recorded state history, costing Texas’ farmers and ranchers an estimated $5.2 billion. But the drought has also had a smaller, more intimate effect on how many Texans live and work. In Houston, the biggest city, the mayor recently ordered residents to limit the watering of their lawns to twice a week. The seaside city of Galveston banned all outdoor watering for five days in August but then eased the rules to allow twice-a-week watering.

In Llano, a town of 3,100 about a 90-minute drive northwest of Austin in the Hill Country, the river from which the town gets 100 percent of its water supply has been running at critically low levels. One recent afternoon, the Llano River was flowing at 2.3 to 3.4 cubic feet per second, down from 123 cubic feet per second, the median level for that date.

Amid so many yellow lawns, the handful of green lawns are a source of curiosity and suspicion, and property owners have had to post handmade signs explaining, in effect, why their grass is green. Some of the signs read “Well water,” meaning the water keeping them alive comes not from the river but from private wells, which are not subject to the restrictions. One resident with a sense of humor posted his own sign on his dying yard. It read, “Rain water.”

The yard outside the First Presbyterian Church has withered, as has the one around Laird’s Bar-B-Q. But the grass has been green at the State Farm Insurance office. The agent, Jeffrey Hopf, has had customers tell him that just because he used to be the mayor does not mean he can violate the water rules. Mr. Hopf has a simple explanation: His landscaper added a turf dye similar to the one used on professional football fields to turn his yellowed lawn green.

That landscaper, Flay Deats, used to mow five or six yards a day, but now does only about three a week, and he estimated that the drought has cost him at least $30,000 in lost business.

Residents and officials have concocted their own drought algorithms to decide what they want to save and what they will let die. During their once-a-week watering time, most people do not bother with the lawn but focus on saving the trees. The golf course, which spent roughly $3,000 obtaining a state permit allowing it to supplement the river water it uses with 3,500 gallons a day of treated sewer water, has kept the main greens healthy but has given up on the driving range and other areas, creating a polka-dot effect of yellow and green. The school district has let the baseball and softball fields go since those sports are in the off-season, but has spent roughly $15,000 to keep the football fields alive with well water as that season gets under way.

“I was talking to somebody the other day, and it’s almost like paradise lost,” said Dennis R. Hill, the schools superintendent. “Llano County is one of the most beautiful places anywhere, when it rains. We have wildflowers and fields of bluebonnets. But drive through the country and look at the pastures. There’s no grass. You keep thinking, ‘Well, surely it will rain, surely it will rain.’ And it doesn’t rain.”

The town’s sacrifices are having an impact. Water use has dropped considerably — in mid-May the city was pumping 1.2 million to 1.4 million gallons a day from the river, but one day in late August that rate was down to 497,000 gallons. One reason for the drop has been the restrictions and the threat of a fine of up to $500, but another has been the older longtime residents, many of whom vividly recall the extended drought of the 1950s. At one point in 1956, the river literally went dry — there was zero flow for a total of 88 days, town officials said — and Llano had to haul in water by train.

“A drought is an unusual animal,” Mayor Mike Reagor said. “You can’t run from a drought. You have to survive it. We’re a tough people. We’ll survive this, hopefully better than they did in 1956.”

The situation is not as dire as it was more than 50 years ago, though the dead landscaping, extreme heat and lack of rain — from January through July, 8.15 inches of rain fell on Llano, according to the National Weather Service — have taken a psychic toll.

Mr. Hill, the schools superintendent, drove around town the other day with a horse trailer — he was in the process of selling Peppy, one of his two horses, because the drought has made hay so scarce. Sue Houston and John Wedekind, the couple who recycle their dishwater, stare at the dying camellia shrub by the front door and hold back tears — Ms. Houston’s mother planted it in the late 1940s.

Mr. Hopf, the insurance agent, took a trip this summer to Wisconsin to see an air show with his wife. It rained on them three times. Mr. Hopf walked outside and let the rain soak him. “I just said, ‘I want to see what it’s like. It’s been so long.’ ”

Sacrifices and Restrictions as Central Texas Town Copes With Drought, NYT, 6.9.2011,
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/07/us/07drought.html

Weird Weather in a Warming World

September 7, 2010
The New York Times
By ANDREW C. REVKIN

GIVEN the weather of late, extremes seem to have become the norm.

New York City just had its hottest June-to-August stretch on record. Moscow, suffering from a once-in-a-millennium heat wave, tallied thousands of deaths, a toll that included hundreds of inebriated, overheated citizens who stumbled into rivers and lakes and didn’t come out. Pakistan is reeling from flooding that inundated close to a fifth of the country.

For decades, scientists have predicted that disastrous weather, including heat, drought and deluges, would occur with increasing frequency in a world heated by the rising concentrations of greenhouse gases. While some may be tempted to label this summer’s extremes the manifestation of our climate meddling, there’s just not a clear-cut link — yet.

Martin Hoerling, a research meteorologist who investigates extreme weather for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, calls any such impression “subjective validation.” He and other climate scientists insist there’s still no way to point to any particular meteorological calamity and firmly finger human-caused global warming, despite high confidence that such warming is already well under way.

One reason is that extreme weather, while by definition rare, is almost never truly unprecedented. Oklahoma City and Nashville had astonishing downpours this year, but a large area of Vermont was devastated by a 36-hour deluge in November 1927. The late-season tropical storm killed more than 80 people, including the state’s lieutenant governor, drowned thousands of dairy cows and destroyed 1,200 bridges.

A 2002 study of lake sediments in and around Vermont found that the 1927 flood was mild compared with some in the pre-Columbian past. In fact, since the end of the last ice age, there were four periods — each about 1,000 years long and peaking roughly every 3,000 years — that saw a substantial number of much more intense, scouring floods. (The researchers found hints in the mud that a fifth such period is beginning.)

Many scientists believe that sub-Saharan Africa will be particularly vulnerable in the coming decades to climate-related dangers like heat waves and flash-flooding. But global warming is the murkiest of the factors increasing the risks there. Persistent poverty, a lack of governance and high rates of population growth have left African countries with scant capacity to manage too much or too little water.

As in Vermont, the climate history of Africa’s tropical belt also makes it incredibly difficult to attribute shifts in extreme weather to any one cause. A recent study of layered sediment in a Ghanaian lake revealed that the region has been periodically beset by centuries-long super-droughts, more potent and prolonged than any in modern times. The most recent lasted from 1400 to 1750.

Though today’s extremes can’t be reliably attributed to the greenhouse effect, they do give us the feel, sweat and all, of what’s to come if emissions are not reined in. Martin Hoerling told me that by the end of the century, this summer’s heat may be the status quo in parts of Russia, not a devastating fluke. Similar projections exist for Washington, the American Southwest, much of India and many other spots.

With the global population cresting in the coming decades, our exposure to extreme events will only worsen. So whatever nations decide to do about greenhouse gas emissions, there is an urgent need to “climate proof” human endeavors. That means building roads in Pakistan and reservoirs in Malawi that can withstand flooding. And it means no longer encouraging construction in flood plains, as we have been doing in areas around St. Louis that were submerged in the great 1993 Mississippi deluge.

In the end, there are two climate threats: one created by increasing human vulnerability to calamitous weather, the other by human actions, particularly emissions of warming gases, that relentlessly shift the odds toward making today’s weather extremes tomorrow’s norm. Without addressing both dangers, there’ll be lots of regrets. But conflating them is likely to add to confusion, not produce solutions.

Andrew C. Revkin, a former environment reporter for The Times, writes the blog Dot Earth for nytimes.com.

Weird Weather in a Warming World, 7.9.2010, http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/08/opinion/08revkin.html

It Adds Up: This Was New York’s Hottest Summer

August 31, 2010
The New York Times
By PATRICK McGEEHAN

With one final, fitting blast of 96-degree heat on Tuesday, the summer of 2010 went down in the National Weather Service’s record books as the hottest ever in New York City.

Hotter than the previous high of 77.3 degrees set in 1966, when more than 1,100 deaths were attributed to heat that repeatedly exceeded 100 degrees. Hotter than 2006, when a heat wave set off a blackout in northern Queens that left more than 100,000 residents without power for days.

But in this record-breaking season — defined by the Weather Service as June through August — there was no cataclysm, no singular event that was likely to define a three-month period when the temperature averaged 77.8 degrees. Instead, the summer of 2010 might be more properly measured in more subtle ways.

For Sal Medina, a newsstand operator from the Bronx, it could be measured by the number of frozen water bottles that he slipped into his pants this week to stay cool (three).

For John Natuzzi, it could be all the ice cubes used during the first day of the United States Open tennis tournament on Monday (80,000 pounds).

For lifeguards, it could be the number of total visitors to the city’s beaches (17.2 million).

For executives at Consolidated Edison, it would surely be the number of 90-degree days the utility struggled through without any widespread disruptions of its power network (34).

Tally it all up and the sum of the last three months is a rarely interrupted stretch of hot days that forced New Yorkers to keep cool in ways both traditional and creative.

Mr. Medina, 56, who lives in Pelham Bay, could barely stand to be inside his metal-jacketed newsstand at Clinton and Delancey Streets on the Lower East Side of Manhattan. To cool off, he devised a system using frozen pint-sized bottles of Poland Spring water.

He would tuck three inside the waistband of his pants. A fourth he would sling in a plastic bag whose handles he would knot just under his chin, holding the icy cylinder against the back of his neck.

Even with that gear, Mr. Medina said he had quit early a few days this summer, heading home at 3 p.m. on the hottest days, instead of the usual 6. The heat, he said, “affects your whole nervous system, makes you grouchy; it makes you so you can’t stand your customers.”

At Natuzzi Brothers Ice Company in Queens, the phones ring nonstop once the temperature hits 90, Mr. Natuzzi said. This summer, he said, his company has been supplying dry ice to ice-cream stores to keep their products frozen, a request he said he rarely got last summer.

The shortage of orders during the cool early months of last summer led to significant losses, Mr. Natuzzi said, but this summer has been a different story. The company, whose warehouse holds 40 tons of ice, sold out its supply during the heat wave that started on the July 4 weekend. It has been running its delivery trucks up to 15 hours a day since then.

“It’s been quite a ride this summer,” Mr. Natuzzi said.

Exhausted as he is, it is not quite over. His company supplies ice to the food-service operations at the United States Open, which runs for two weeks. On the first day, the Open used about 20,000 pounds more than usual, he said. “I’ll look back and say that this is one summer I’ll never forget,” Mr. Natuzzi said.

At Con Edison, the summer of 2010 will be memorable for what did and did not happen. In the past three months, the utility’s customers drew more power off its grid than during any previous three-month period, according to data compiled by the company. But through successive heat waves, the electric distribution system held up, with only occasional localized disruptions.

“For two days we suffered,” said Theo Trilivas, 65, a retired plumber who lost power in his home in Astoria, Queens, in July. “No power. No cooking. No A.C. No lights. Nothing. We had to throw out everything in the freezer.”

The growing demand for power from residential customers has been one of the bigger surprises to Con Ed officials this summer. Of the company’s 36 distribution networks, 14 — all in residential areas — exceeded the forecast for peak demand, said John F. Miksad, a senior vice president who oversees the company’s electric operations. Reflecting the weak state of the economy, power usage by commercial customers declined this summer, he said.

The increased use of air-conditioning has been one constant of life in the metropolitan region. According to Con Ed’s estimates, 6.6 million air-conditioners are in use in its service area, and that number is rising by at least 170,000 a year.

Sam Sharma and his wife tried placing buckets of ice cubes on window sills and in front of fans in their apartment on the second floor of a house in Woodside, Queens. But eventually they broke down and did what so many other New Yorkers have done: they bought an air-conditioner.

“We have it in the living room and only run it when it is extreme heat, and then only for a few hours,” said Mr. Sharma, an immigrant from Nepal who works as a parking lot attendant. “Maybe we used it 10 days this whole summer. It’s expensive.”

In search of relief, some people actually sought out the city. On Monday, Sharon Fredman, 38, a Web consultant from Tenafly, N.J., had run out of suburban options to entertain her daughter, Margot, 8, and keep her cool at the same time. So she drove in for the day to let Margot splash around in a sprinkler in Tompkins Square Park. “When it’s 90 degrees,” Ms. Fredman said, “it’s equally hot everywhere.”

When New Yorkers sought to escape the heat indoors, they flocked to the beaches, particularly Coney Island. According to the city’s parks department, total attendance at Coney Island’s beach slightly exceeded 12.8 million people, more than triple the total from 2009.

“There were tremendous increases at all the beaches,” said Adrian Benepe, the parks commissioner. “The beaches were our natural air-conditioners.”

Many of those beachgoers were repeat visitors, like Stephen Fybish, who said he went to Coney Island or neighboring Brighton Beach to swim in the ocean 11 times this summer. He said that he found the sand to be crowded some days but that he always had ample room to swim.

A weather historian who has kept detailed records on temperatures in the city for many years, Mr. Fybish was already looking ahead to September and calculating what sort of weather it would take to extend the hottest-ever distinction. By his reckoning, the average temperature for the month has to be higher than 71 degrees for New York to have its hottest June-through-September period on record.

C. J. Hughes and Rebecca White contributed reporting.

It Adds Up: This Was New York’s Hottest Summer, NYT, 31.8.2010, http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/01/nyregion/01summer.html

Death Toll in Australian Bushfires Climbs to 84

February 9, 2009
The New York Times
By MERAIAH FOLEY

SYDNEY — John Ryan watched in horror as the sky above his farm in southern Australia turned from blue to black. Ten minutes later, the forest around his house was engulfed in flames.

He and a neighbor huddled inside his house while the worst of the blaze passed overhead. Then Mr. Ryan ran outside and began hosing down scores of tiny ember fires that had started in the gutters, on the roof and all around his mountain homestead.

Mr. Ryan’s home was spared, but his neighbor was not so fortunate.

“It burned everything as far as you can see,” Mr. Ryan told a radio station as he surveyed the damage to his neighbor’s home in Glenburn, 60 miles northeast of Melbourne. “There’s nothing left; dead animals everywhere.”

Victoria state police said that at least 84 people were killed in a series of wildfires that tore across the southern state of Victoria on Saturday, the country’s deadliest firestorm ever. Some died trying to escape the fires in their cars; others were caught up trying to protect their homes.

The death toll from the fires was the worst since the “Ash Wednesday” fires of 1983, when 75 people were killed and hundreds of homes destroyed across southern Australia.

More than 700 houses were razed and two townships were almost completely leveled in the disaster. Police said there were at least two children among the dead, and warned that the death toll could rise as emergency crews searched for bodies in the hardest hit towns.

More than 80 people were hospitalized across the fire zone. The victims included at least 20 burn patients, some of whom were unlikely to survive, hospital officials told reporters.

The fires were driven by hot winds of more than 62 miles per hour, and temperatures that peaked at 117 degrees in Melbourne, making Saturday the city’s hottest day on record.

Witnesses described seeing trees and houses explode into flames as ash and soot rained from amber skies. Many, like Mr. Ryan, were stranded at their properties, with no firefighters in sight and no time to escape the inferno.

“You couldn’t see anything, you couldn’t do anything and you couldn’t get out,” Mr. Ryan said. “You just have to hope that the house wouldn’t burn down.”

At Kinglake, where at least 18 people died and most of the town’s homes were destroyed, police said they found the charred bodies of several victims in cars littered along the highway. Six people were found dead in one car, according to media reports.

The residents of nearby Marysville, an alpine village of about 600 people, were counting their losses and considering their futures on Sunday after the fire destroyed nearly every home and business in town. Aerial images showed rows of buildings reduced to piles of tangled rubble along neat streets lined with scorched trees.

Around 30 residents who had not evacuated before Saturday spent the night huddled on a grassy field near town while the blaze engulfed Marysville, according to media reports. Two bodies were discovered in the town on Sunday, and emergency crews continued to search through the wreckage.

Around 3,000 career and volunteer firefighters were battling against a dozen large wildfires that had burned more than 770 square miles of forest and farmland. Authorities said they suspected that at least some of the fires had been lit by arsonists.

“Hell in all its fury has visited the good people of Victoria,” Prime Minister Kevin Rudd told reporters after meeting with emergency relief workers in Melbourne. “This is an appalling tragedy.”

The government set up a 10 million Australian dollar ($6.5 million) relief fund, including an immediate payment of 1,000 dollars ($650) to victims of the blaze. Mr. Rudd also deployed the country’s army to the region to help fight the fires and provide emergency help.

Choking back tears, John Brumby, the Victoria state premier, warned residents to prepare for more casualties and property damage as the fires continued to burn across the state.

Fires are common during Australia’s hot, dry summers, when the oil-rich eucalyptus forests become especially vulnerable during lightening strikes or sparks thrown from farm equipment. But a prolonged drought and the weekend’s searing temperatures made recent conditions particularly bad.

Death Toll in Australian Bushfires Climbs to 84, NYT, 8.2.2009, http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/09/world/asia/09australia.html

Storm Long Past, Darkness and Heat

Still Cling to Baton Rouge

September 9, 2008
The New York Times
By ADAM NOSSITER

BATON ROUGE, La. — The fearsome heat of a South Louisiana summer, unmediated by air-conditioning, reduces the strong to a primal struggle and sends the weak to the hospital.

Thousands here are enduring it this way seven days after Hurricane Gustav. Nearly 40 percent of the city’s electrical power remains out, and the principal utility, Entergy, says it will be the last week of September before everyone’s electricity here in the state capital is restored.

Whole neighborhoods are sweating it out, discovering things about the natural setting, themselves and their neighbors they did not know and in some cases did not particularly want to know. Front doors are open, generators are humming, downed tree limbs are piled high, and the people are dripping.

Power blackouts have been widespread in South Louisiana in the last week. More than 200,000 of Entergy’s customers in Louisiana were still without power Monday, down from nearly 829,000 immediately after the storm.

“It’s sort of paralyzed the economy of the state,” said Foster Campbell, a member of the Louisiana Public Service Commission.

Politicians are fuming, literally and figuratively. Several are vowing investigations and promising a closer look at warding off the failures that are, in Louisiana, as common as the violent summer storm.

This one, however, is a marathon. And it is particularly hard to swallow now that New Orleans, the resented city downriver, has had its power restored, and just downright unpleasant when the thermometer reads 95 and the humidity is right there with it.

“I’m not coping; I’m just existing,” said Marilyn O’Brien, standing outside her son’s house in Capital Heights, a pleasant district of 1920s houses under towering trees, many of them now fractured by the storm. Ms. O’Brien looked haggard. The yard was covered in downed power lines and chunks of tree trunk her son had diligently sawed. He has no power, and neither does she.

“I don’t know how the Iraqis have done it,” she said. “Your energy’s zapped, and you’re wet. My clothes feel like another layer of skin. And I’ve not slept in a week.”

Down the street, the power failure sent 73-year-old Verien Flaherty to the hospital with heat exhaustion and dehydration by the second day. Her little house, she said stoically, had become “quite hot and smelly.” By Monday, though, her son had procured a generator, and she was sitting in the darkened living room.

Nearby were fleets of Entergy trucks, not working fast enough for most of the people here. Entergy says the hurricane roared right up the path of its major transmission lines, knocking out all 14 of them between here and New Orleans. Some 8,000 poles went down too, all carrying above-ground wires. Giant steel towers holding the lines were pushed to the ground like a child’s Erector set.

Alex Schott, a spokesman for Entergy, said the company was “restoring power at record speeds.” The company’s lines suffered “a lot of damage,” Mr. Schott said, and Baton Rouge was “where the brunt of it occurred.”

Even longtime critics of Entergy, a profit-making regional energy company that is a monopoly or near-monopoly in many places and whose stock has steadily risen over the last eight years, say burying the power lines may not be practical in a place like South Louisiana, where water is rarely far from the surface.

But there could be other ways of protecting the power system from the strong storms that regularly batter this coastal state. Senator Mary L. Landrieu, Democrat of Louisiana, said Monday that she was working on legislation to give the government a role in strengthening the transmission lines here, “so that when disaster strikes, our communities will not be faced with needless and endless power outages.”

Mr. Schott said Entergy might be interested in such strategies, “as long as costs are recoverable” — in all likelihood, paid by the customers.

An aide to Ms. Landrieu spoke of encasing the lines in reinforced pipe, as is done in Europe.

Mr. Campbell, the public service commissioner, said it was “totally unacceptable for people to be out two, three weeks without electricity.” He made note of what has become a particular irritant in light of the failures, the sky-high power bills that are a feature of life here.

“There’s a great irony here: we have some of the poorest people in the country, and some of the highest utility rates in the Southeastern U.S.” said Mr. Campbell, who added that he was “not interested in giving Entergy any money for this storm.”

In Capital Heights, the accent was on stoicism. “Our house is sweaty hot,” said Kelly Nelson, a hospital physical therapist. “You go to sleep at 9 o’clock, you wake up at 11 at night, hoping it’s time to go to work.”

Across the street, Keith Morris, an artist, was wet but smiling. “It’s O.K.,” he said. “I’m 58 years old. I’ve lived in Louisiana and in Siberia, and it’s a hell of a lot easier here than in Siberia.”

For others, the unwonted exposure to that basic element of Louisiana life made them rethink a commitment that often demands so much. “I’ve lost my attachment to something that hurts me,” Ms. O’Brien said.

“It has beaten me up, so I feel like divorcing it,” she said. “I would leave Louisiana.”

Jeremy Alford contributed reporting.

Storm Long Past, Darkness and Heat Still Cling to Baton Rouge, NYT, 9.9.2008, http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/09/us/09power.html

Scorching Heat Blankets East Coast

June 10, 2008
The New York Times
By JOHN HOLUSHA

Scorching heat and stifling humidity gripped much of the east coast on Monday, with the National Weather Service issuing heat advisories as temperatures were expected to exceed 100 degrees in many areas.

The heat wave was expected to last into Tuesday and prompted officials in Philadelphia and Connecticut to send students in public and parochial schools home early both days and cancel evening programs, The Associated Press reported. The heat caused power failures that interrupted some subway service in New York.

New York’s Office of Emergency Management said it would open cooling centers for people who do not have air conditioning, and other cities were making similar arrangements. Officials urged relatives and neighbors to check in on elderly, housebound people, who are most in danger during hot spells.

The hot weather extended from New England down through the Middle Atlantic states into the Carolinas.

Weather officials said heat waves are not just uncomfortable, they are dangerous. “Heat is the number one weather-related killer,” the weather service said. “On average, more than 1,500 people in the U.S. die each year from excessive heat.”

That is more than the deaths attributed to tornadoes, hurricanes, floods and lightening combined, the agency said.

In New York City, service on the F and G lines in Brooklyn was disrupted during Monday’s rush hour because Con Ed lines that power the subway systems signals failed. Officials of New York City Transit said generators were being sent to the affected areas so service could be resumed.

Paul Fleuranges, a spokesman for the transit system, said the problem was relatively minor, but critical. “We have third-rail power. That hasn’t been affected. So we can move trains, but without signals we can’t operate safely, which is why we have to bring in generators.”

Sunday’s high temperature in Central Park was 93 degrees, just shy of the 95-degree record for the date.

Scorching Heat Blankets East Coast, NYT, 10.6.2008, http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/10/us/09cnd-weather.html?hp

Governor Declares Drought in California

and Warns of Rationing

June 5, 2008
The New York Times
By JENNIFER STEINHAUER

LOS ANGELES — Its reservoir levels receding and its grounds parched, California has fallen officially into drought, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger said Wednesday, warning that the state might be forced to ration water to cities and regions if conservation efforts did not improve.

The drought declaration — the first for the state since 1991 — includes orders to transfer water from less dry areas to those that are dangerously dry. Mr. Schwarzenegger also said he would ask the federal government for aid to farmers and press water districts, cities and local water agencies to accelerate conservation. Drought conditions have hampered farming, increased water rates throughout California and created potentially dangerous conditions in areas prone to wildfires.

The declaration comes after the driest California spring in 88 years, with runoff in river basins that feed most reservoirs at 41 percent of average levels. It stops short of a water emergency, which would probably include mandatory rationing.

Efforts to capture water have also been hampered by evaporation of some mountain snowpacks that provide water, an effect, state officials say, of global climate change.

A survey this year found that the state’s snowpack water content was 67 percent of average, and the Colorado River Basin, from which California draws some water, is coming off a record eight-year drought, contributing to the drop in reservoir storage.

The drought declaration, made when reservoir levels are far higher than they were when Gov. Pete Wilson issued a similar statement in 1991 — is as much a political statement as a practical one. Mr. Schwarzenegger is pressing the Legislature to approve an $11.9 billion water bond as part of the state budget to pay for water storage and to fix the state’s aging water delivery systems.

The governor, a Republican, has said that addressing California’s seemingly omnipresent water shortage is one of his most urgent priorities, but his ideas have not passed muster with the Legislature in the past.

“This drought is an urgent reminder of the immediate need to upgrade California’s water infrastructure,” Mr. Schwarzenegger said Wednesday in a prepared statement. “There is no more time to waste because nothing is more vital to protect our economy, our environment and our quality of life.”

A bill to require Californians to cut water use 20 percent recently passed the Assembly. The bill, which requires Senate approval, puts most of the onus on residents, and little on the agriculture industry, underscoring tension over conservation between city dwellers and farmers, who consume most of the state’s water.

Across the state, many districts and municipalities are instituting or considering recycling, rationing and higher fees for excessive use. For instance, Los Angeles officials recently announced their intentions to begin using heavily cleansed sewage to increase drinking water supplies.

The East Bay Municipal Utility District and the Long Beach Water Department, serving districts at opposite ends of the state, have made water rationing mandatory.

“Some cities and regions are rationing, some are doing nothing and a group of people are in the middle,” the director of California’s Department of Water Resources, Lester A. Snow, said in a telephone interview. “The governor thought it was important to step out in front and get ahead of this. It is in part to avoid an emergency.”

In a telephone interview later, Mr. Schwarzenegger said, “Water is like our gold, and we have to treat it like that.”

Governor Declares Drought in California and Warns of Rationing, NYT, 5.6.2008, http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/05/us/05drought.html

Overheating Britain: April temperatures break all records

Will this be the summer when Britain reaches 40°C
and the effects of climate change are painfully brought home

Published: 28 April 2007
The New York Times
By Michael McCarthy, Environment Editor

The possibility is growing that Britain in 2007 may experience a summer of unheard-of high temperatures, with the thermometer even reaching 40C, or 104F,a level never recorded in history.

The likelihood of such a "forty degree summer" is being underlined by the tumbling over the past year of a whole series of British temperature records, strongly suggesting that the British Isles have begun to experience a period of rapid, not to say alarming, warming. This would be quite outside all historical experience, but entirely consistent with predictions of climate change.

The Met Office's Hadley Centre for Climate Prediction and Research, in a joint forecast with the Climatic Research Unit of the University of East Anglia, has already suggested that 2007 will be the hottest year ever recorded globally.

Its long-term forecast for this summer in Britain is much more cautious, merely predicting that temperatures this year will be "above average". However, the suite of new records for the UK established in the past 12 months, culminating in an April of unprecedented high temperatures, is pointing to something new happening to the British climate.

The incredibly warm April days we have been experiencing are not just wonderful, they are downright weird when seen in their seasonal context. Some of them have been 10C hotter, or more, than they should be at this time of the year.

Average maximum temperatures at the end of April in southern England are traditionally about 13C or 14C. This weekend in London and the South-east, the thermometer may hit 26C or even 27C - 79F to 80F.

An air temperature of 80 in April seems to belong to fantasy land. In the childhood of anyone aged over 40, it was a rare enough temperature in August.

Even with its end not yet here, this month is certain to be the hottest April ever recorded. But that's just one of a cascade of British temperature records which are now falling.

Spring 2007 (defined as March, April and May) will probably be Britain's hottest spring. It has followed the second-warmest winter in the UK record (December, January and February) and the warmest-ever autumn (September, October and November 2006).

Before that, we had Britain's hottest-ever month (July last year), which included the hottest-ever July day (19 July, when the temperature at Wisley, Surrey, reached 36.5C, or 97.7F, beating a record that had lasted since 1911).

To crown it all, yesterday the Met Office announced that the past 12 months, taken together, have been the hottest 12 months ever to have occurred in Britain, with a provisional mean temperature of 10.4C. The previous record (March 1997 to April 1998) was 9.7C.

This leap of nearly three-quarters of a degree is huge and should make everybody consider whether a major shift in Britain's climate is becoming visible. To answer Yes to that question is by no means unreasonable.

It raises the possibility that in 2007 Britain may experience for the first time the sort of "extreme event" heatwave that supercomputer models of climate predict will hit Britain as global warming takes hold.

A heatwave of this nature hit northern and central France in the first two weeks of August 2003 and caused 18,000 excess deaths (part of a total of 35,000 excess deaths in a wider area including Switzerland, northern Italy and southern Germany). Many of the dead were old people with breathing difficulties who collapsed when night-time temperatures never dropped below the 80s Fahrenheit.

The temperatures recorded during this episode were so far above the statistical record that it is accepted by meteorological scientists as having been caused by climate change - and is regarded as one of its first manifestations in Europe.

Even though Britain was not at the centre of the heatwave, the UK temperature record was resoundingly smashed by it. On 10 August 2003, the 100F mark was breached for the first time ever, with a reading of 38.5C, or 101.3F, at Brogdale, near Faversham in Kent.

The previous record had been 37.1C, or 98.8F, set on 3 August 1990 at Cheltenham, Gloucestershire, and thus the jump was 1.4 degrees Centigrade or 2.5 degrees Fahrenheit, an absolutely enormous leap.

Despite the astonishing April, the natural variability of the climate is such that there is no guarantee whatsoever that the 2003 record will be broken this summer. But the indications are pointing that way. And if 2007 summer temperatures do go even higher, hitting the 40C/104F mark, there might well be severe problems for the public services, not just with drought and water shortages, but with large-scale heat exhaustion.

A side effect might well be to make it extremely hard for people who do not accept that climate change is happening to deny the reality of a warming world.

"The effects of temperature rise are being experienced on a global scale," Dr Debbie Hemming, a climate scientist at the Hadley Centre, said last night.

"Many of the regions that are projected to experience the largest climate changes are already vulnerable to environmental stress from resource shortages, rapid urbanisation, population rise and industrial development."

If you want to bet on the temperature exceeding the 100F mark this summer, Ladbrokes will only quote odds of 3-1.

The bookies aren't stupid. And they may well be right.

Overheating Britain

* The winter of 2006-2007 was the UK's second-hottest ever

* Autumn 2006 was the hottest ever

* July 2006 was Britain's hottest ever month

* Hottest ever 12-month period: 31 April 2006 to 1 May 2007
(provisional mean temperature: 10.4C)

* Previous hottest: 31 March 1997 to 1 April 1998 (9.7C)

Overheating Britain: April temperatures break all records, I, 28.4.2007, http://news.independent.co.uk/environment/climate_change/article2491773.ece

Meanwhile, in Australia

a global crisis arrives in the back yard

Published: 28 April 2007
The Independent
By Kathy Marks in Brisbane

When the timer pings, Emma Kendall-Marsden knows that her four minutes in the shower are up. In her native Northamptonshire she loved to linger under a powerful hot jet. But this is Brisbane, and the water is running out.

Emma and her husband, Sam, emigrated to Australia in 2003. The lifestyle and warm climate were the main attractions. They bought a house in a leafy Brisbane suburb. Their spacious lawn was irrigated by 24-hour sprinklers.

The couple could not have predicted that within a few years the country would be gripped by its most crippling drought on record. Southeast Queensland has been one of the areas worst affected, and the Kendall-Marsdens have watched dam levels fall to a historic low.

Now they are now living under the toughest water restrictions ever imposed in Australia.

The drought, which many scientists have linked with global warming, is regarded as the first climate change-driven disaster to strike a developed nation.

Sam is a keen gardener, but his lawn is an expanse of shrivelled brown grass that crunches underfoot. The soil is like concrete, and the flowerbeds are dotted with straggly corpses. “That used to be a magnolia bush,” he says. “And those were irises.” He and Emma used to pick lemons for their gin and tonics. Like everything else, their lemon tree is dead.

When they first moved in, “it was green”, says Sam. “It was lush,” says Emma. “It was beautiful,” they chorus.

Now gardens may only be watered by bucket, from 4-7pm three days a week. Hosepipes are banned, and only car mirrors and windscreens can be washed. Children’s paddling pools may not be filled.

Residents are being cajoled and threatened into using no more than 140 litres of water a day each. One minute in the shower consumes up to 15 litres. A soak in the bath can soak up 200, while a load of washing uses about 165.

In stiff upper-lipped fashion, the Kendall-Marsdens are doing their best to meet the target. They turn off taps while brushing their teeth and soaping themselves in the shower. They stuff the washing machine full, and have mothballed the dishwasher. They save up dirty crockery to wash in bulk. “I couldn’t tell you when I last had a bath,” says Sam, a solicitor.

Even their Rottweiler, Cesar, must do his bit. In the past he was given a full bucket of water. Now he is limited to half a bucket.

Yet the couple are still using 194 litres each per day, according to Sam, who carefully logs their consumption. “We’ve been really frugal,” he says. “I don’t know what else we can cut back.” Emma says: “I feel guilty even turning on the tap.”

The Kendall-Marsdens are not just being good citizens. Households with excessive water usage are required to perform an audit, and may be fined. But beyond that lies a more compelling reason. “I’m scared we’re going to run out of water,” says Sam.

That fear is well grounded. The three dams servicing the region are down to less than 20 per cent of capacity. If next summer is as dry as the last one, Brisbane will run out of water late next year.

By that time a $7bn (2.91bn pounds) programme aimed at “drought-proofing” southeast Queensland is supposed to have been completed. It includes a desalination plant on the Gold Coast, south of Brisbane, and a pipeline that will pump recycled water to power stations. New dams are also planned.

But if construction work falls behind schedule, there will be a crisis. “Frankly, it’s a close race,” says a source at the Queensland Water Commission.

Smaller towns in the region have already run dry, and are having to truck in water supplies at great expense. The government is talking about evacuating residents.

In Brisbane, deadly funnel-web spiders are invading backyards, while thirsty kangaroos are colliding with cars in outer suburbs. In rural areas, snakes have become a menace. “We had a 5ft red-bellied black on the verandah the other day,” says Paul Van Vegchel, who lives on a property near Kingaroy, north-west of Brisbane. “They’re extremely venomous.”

Mr Van Vegchel, an artist, is usually self-sufficient. “But my dam’s bone dry, and my bore’s pumping salt water,” he said. “Me and the wife share a very skimpy bath, then we wash our smalls in it, then we put that water in the garden pots.”

Like many locals, Mr Van Vegchel accuses the Queensland government of failing to plan adequately for the needs of Australia’s fastest growing region. The beaches and warm climate of Brisbane, the Gold Coast and the Sunshine Coast, to the north, attract 60,000 new inhabitants a year. The current population is 2.8 million.

“The government has sat back and had this great influx of people into the southeast corner,” said Mr Van Vegchel. “There’s been no planning; it’s just been welcome on board.”

While southeast Queensland is highly urbanised, it has 4,000 farmers, all of whom are enduring hard times. John Cherry, chief executive of the Queensland Farmers Federation, says dairy production is down by 30 per cent since 2002, while fruit and vegetable production has halved in four years.

Across the state, about 37,000 jobs in agriculture have disappeared. “The social impact has been devastating,” said Mr Cherry.

Linton Brimblecombe, who farms in the Lockyer Valley, west of Brisbane, is still growing beetroot, but has abandoned his sweetcorn, green beans and broccoli. Unless it rains, he will be out of water by September.

Mr Brimblecombe built dams during the last drought 10 years ago. “Back then the farming community was suffering, but Brisbane wasn’t,” he said. “So the Queensland government missed a wake-up call.”

A fourth-generation farmer, he is certain he is witnessing the effects of climate change. “We watch the weather and temperatures intimately, because they determine how we treat our crops,” he said. “Most definitely we’re warming up and our rainfall is decreasing.”

New figures published yesterday suggest Australia will exceed its Kyoto target for greenhouse gas emissions by two per cent. The government, which has refused to ratify the Kyoto Protocol but claims to be on course to meet the target anyway, rejected the figures.

In southeast Queensland, the situation is so dire that people are stealing water. One Brisbane sports club had 12,000 litres siphoned from its tank. Some sports pitches have closed because the ground is dangerously hard. Even tougher water restrictions may be imposed by September.

Paul Greenfield, a Queensland University professor and leading water expert, said supply would have to be rationed to certain times of day if the new infrastructure was not completed on time.

Meanwhile, the Kendall-Marsdens’ neighbours, Scott and Jessica Hitchcock, are even worse off than them. Their lawn is so dry that long cracks have opened up, several inches wide in places. Mrs Hitchcock worries that one of her children may break an ankle.

Back home, the Kendall-Marsdens pore over photographs of their once green garden and ponder whether to return to England.

Meanwhile, in Australia a global crisis arrives in the back yard, I, 28.4.2007, http://news.independent.co.uk/environment/climate_change/article2491768.ece

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