WP - The Downside Of Endless Summer - Even Beltway Denizens Sense Something's Wrong

[hatrack]

EDIT

This year's lack of rain is creating problems large and small, from huge water bills for some avid gardeners to what Heidi Symms of Gainesville calls a bumper crop of certain bugs. Spiders are her arch foe. "I think the bugs like the dry weather," she said while shopping for insecticide at a Southern States gardening store in Manassas.

In the District and across the region's suburbs, residents are adapting to a dry spell that has bedeviled farmers for months. One couple saves on bath water by washing children two-to-a-tub. Others have refused to concede their lawns to nature's whims, watering with abandon. A structural engineer in Alexandria said he's advising homeowners with foundation problems and clay-heavy soils to soak the perimeter of their house as a protective measure.

Although cooler weather is expected today and through the weekend, arid conditions are likely to persist through the end of the month, said Jim DeCarufel, a meteorologist at the National Weather Service's Sterling office. Only 21 inches of rain has been tallied at Reagan National Airport this year, well below the 31-inch normal total.

"It's going to take widespread wet weather for days to make any dent in the drought," DeCarufel said, "and right now, that's not in the foreseeable future." The record low for annual rainfall is 21.6 inches, set in 1930, he said. This year's dry conditions have inflicted crop losses as high as 60 percent on farmers in Maryland and Virginia, where state officials have asked for federal drought disaster relief. The dry weather is also starting to afflict suburban residents.

EDIT

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/10/10/AR2007101002608.html

[RubyDuby in GA]

1. It's really bad in GA too. We're on a statewide watering ban.

People are turning in their neighbors and counties/cities are actually ticketing people for watering.

I hate to say it because it really does a number on people on the coast, but we desperately need some tropical storms.

[tom_paine]

2. Plus, the Okeefenokee swamp burned up recently, did it not?

I remember, because that was the one thing they failed to mention on Cable TV Infoganda...oh, hundreds of thousands of acres of Georgia were burning in "forest fires".

But it wasn't forest, was it? It was dessicated swamp.

[hatrack]

3. Yes, but what IS a swamp, if not an extremely wet forest?

:sarcasm: