Fruit Crops Wither In Northwest Drought - McPaper

[hatrack]

YAKIMA, Wash. — "To farmers like Ric Valicoff, the economics of drought are depressingly familiar. Four dry years in the past 13 have scorched their balance sheets and got them wondering whether there's something to all the talk about global warming.

Growers here in apple country are scrambling to find alternative water supplies as a drought that has eased in much of the West lingers in the Pacific Northwest. Even Seattle, capital of wet, urged residents last month to conserve water in case of summer shortages. “We're all making tough decisions,” Valicoff says. “There won't be much of a bottom line this year if you've been following apple prices.” He and 1,400 other farmers in the Yakima Valley's Roza Irrigation District will get about a third of their normal water quota.

The National Weather Service predicts that the drought will “persist or intensify” in Washington and Oregon and show only “some improvement” in Montana and Idaho, raising chances of a bad summer wildfire season and fish kills due to low stream flows.

Washington Gov. Christine Gregoire declared a statewide drought emergency March 10 and asked the Legislature for $12 million more in drought funds. Oregon Gov. Ted Kulongoski has declared emergencies in eight counties. April rain boosted the outlook west of the Cascade Mountains along the Washington and Oregon coasts. But vast stretches east of the Cascades that need melting mountain snow to irrigate farms and for drinking water got little relief."

EDIT

http://www.usatoday.com/printedition/news/20050505/a_nwdrought05.art.htm

Precip in the Colorado Basin is just barely above average at 102%, but in the Columbia Basin it's now at 48% of historic averages.

[liam_laddie]

1. fruit and precipitation

Ouch, it's the wine grapes in the Willamette and WA "appelations" that worry me. Can't they drain the snow pack in the Cascades? Just kidding...

As to rainfall, Seattle ain't that bad, just that it drips & drizzles from gray skies a lot; it gets about 39" a year (average.) Here in SW Ohio, we get an annual inch or two MORE, no BS. And the
drenching midwest thunderstorms are good theater.