
Five Years of Drought - uptown
https://adventuresinmapping.wordpress.com/2016/07/12/five-years-of-drought/
======
lumpypua
This guy has some other great maps worth checking out as well. I think his
sharknado one is awesome:
[https://adventuresinmapping.wordpress.com/2016/06/09/how-
to-...](https://adventuresinmapping.wordpress.com/2016/06/09/how-to-sharknado-
map/)

------
adevine
What is the takeaway, though, from looking at drought in this "% in drought
over 5 years" manner? For example, central Texas had horrible drought for much
of this time, only to end in severe flooding. Seems like a better metric would
be average total rainfall over this period, and then year-to-year variance.

------
niftich
A very high-quality submission full of good visualizations of interesting
data.

The narrative in the article describes the rationales for arriving at some of
the visualization formats. This was as much of a 'making-of' article as a
presentation of the end results; highly recommend.

------
exabrial
The great news is 2016 has a great year for drought recovery... so far:
[https://www.drought.gov/drought](https://www.drought.gov/drought) Hopefully
California can get some love.

Here in Kansas, we're having an uncharacteristically wet summer. Many of my
friends that planted corn, milo, and hay are looking at major bumper crops
this fall.

~~~
thomasfoster96
Milo[0] can be grown as a crop? :)

[0]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milo_(drink)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milo_\(drink\))

------
Retric
It's going to get really interesting once most of the prehistoric water is
used up.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dust_Bowl](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dust_Bowl)

~~~
exabrial
Related note about fracking in the midwest: Water can be drilled for at
100ft-600ft usually. Despite that shallow depth, It will take 6,000+ years to
restore the aquifer in the unfortunate event that the resource is not
conserved.

With the average oil/natural gas well depth of 3,500ft in the central midwest,
it's important to remember that these wells are far below a region where they
could affect the water table. Careless and irresponsible operators spilling
toxic solvents is the real danger that needs to be addressed.

This should also dispel the myth that the Keystone pipeline poses a major risk
to the aquifer, if every engineering precaution were to break down and the
worst happen.

Now if we could just figure out a way to cheaply transmit all this wind power
we have in the midwest back east....

~~~
sdm
The comment about the Keystone pipeline is a bit non sequitur. The Keystone
pipeline has nothing to do with fracking at all and has nothing to do with oil
wells in the US central midwest. It will carry unconventional heavy crude from
the Athabasca oil sands in Northern Alberta to refineries along the US gulf
coast. Plus currently, Oil sands is generally mined not drilled -- though as
the oil on the surface runs out there will be more in situ wells if the
economics can support. Thus far most of the extraction of Athabasca oil sands
has been done by open pit mining.

The objections to the Keystone pipeline have two main focal points: (1) the
risk of spills given the heavy crude is more difficult to clean up, and (2)
that it will ease the extraction of oil and put more green house gasses in the
atmosphere.

------
foota
Some really cool maps in here, definitely recommend checking out!

------
liveshops_
I like the optimist's drought map! It's like "the drought is half full.

It would be interesting to track the effects of the drought, specifically in
California. I feel like a map like that would light up the entire US.

------
karma_vaccum123
I wonder at what point we Californians stop describing this as a drought.

