by Michael Snyder, The Economic Collapse Blog:
If you live in the Southwest, you don’t need me to tell you that it is hot. A massive “heat dome” has been sitting over the region for quite some time, and it doesn’t appear that it will be moving much for at least several more days. There have been many areas where the heat index has already been up around 120 degrees. In Rio Grande Village, the actual temperature was 119 degrees on Friday, and forecasters were warning that the same reading would be reached again on Tuesday. This extreme heat has already caused several deaths, and it could potentially cause widespread crop failures.
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If you live in an area that is being affected by this heat dome, please don’t take any unnecessary risks.
According to a professor of atmospheric science at Iowa State University, the extreme heat that is being produced can make it “feel like an oven” when you are outside…
A heat dome occurs when a persistent region of high pressure traps heat over an area, according to William Gallus, professor of atmospheric science at Iowa State University.
“The heat dome can stretch over several states and linger for days to weeks, leaving the people, crops and animals below to suffer through stagnant, hot air that can feel like an oven,” Gallus said in an article in The Conversation.
Unfortunately, it is going to be some time before cooler temperatures come along, and it is being reported that extreme heat will soon “expand north into the Plains and east into the Southeast”…
Tens of millions of Americans across the south and central U.S. – many of them in Texas – have endured a brutal heat wave over the past couple of weeks as temperatures soared to record levels, including some above 110 degrees.
Forecasters expect the intense heat to continue in Texas for much of this week in and expand north into the Plains and east into the Southeast. Meteorologist Scot Pilie warned on Twitter that more temperature records could topple, leading to dangerous heat index values.
Needless to say, all of this heat is not good for crops.
According to Newsweek, crops in Texas are basically cannibalizing themselves in a desperate attempt to survive…
Crops in Texas are essentially “cannibalizing” themselves to survive during the state’s severe heat wave, according to one farmer.
“They are drying up a lot faster than they should, causing it to lodge and fall over. The plant is basically cannibalizing itself and eating itself up trying to survive,” farmer James Faske told KRIS-TV in Corpus Christi.
This is really bad news, but if crops elsewhere were doing great we would be fine.
Of course that is not the case at all.
Further north, drought conditions continue to spread throughout the Midwest…
Nearly 60% of the Midwest, which includes Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kentucky, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, Ohio and Wisconsin, is under moderate drought, according to the U.S. Drought Monitor, which is run jointly by the federal government and the National Drought Mitigation Center at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Nearly 93% of the region is abnormally dry, with around 16% of it suffering severe drought.
In the Great Plains states of Kansas and Nebraska, the situation is far worse. A quarter of Nebraska and 38% of Kansas are under extreme drought. More than a tenth of Nebraska and 8% of Kansas are in exceptional drought — the monitor’s most severe stage.
As I have detailed in previous articles, corn and soy farmers are being absolutely devastated by the persistent drought conditions.
At this point, some parts of Illinois “have received only around 5% of normal rainfall this month”…
Parts of Illinois have received only around 5% of normal rainfall this month, he added. Several places in the state should have 10 more inches of precipitation than they’ve gotten since April. Cities in the Chicago area are having their driest periods since 1936. Major rivers in the state, such as the Illinois and Kankakee, are at record lows for this time of year.
So what is going to happen if plenty of rain does not come in the weeks ahead?
Illinois is one of our most important farming states. It normally produces massive amounts of corn and soy.
But now conditions are so bad that giant dust storms are being produced. For example, an absolutely gigantic dust storm that happened on May 1st resulted in an 84 vehicle pileup…
Illinois’ farming practices have come into sharper focus since May 1, when a massive cloud of soil, blown from nearby fields by winds topping 40 mph, blanketed a busy stretch of Interstate 55 south of Springfield. The resulting 84-vehicle pileup killed eight people and injured at least three-dozen others.
Some called what happened that morning a “perfect storm,” unprecedented in its size, its staying power and the carnage it caused.
For a long time I tried to explain to my readers that Dust Bowl conditions would be returning to the middle of the country.
Now we are here.
Last week, I wrote about the fact that 64 percent of our corn and 57 percent of our soy is currently being grown in areas that are experiencing drought.
It will be interesting to see how those numbers change when the next U.S. Drought Monitor update comes out on Thursday.
Even before this “heat dome” arrived, U.S. corn was in horrible condition.
In fact, the last time U.S. corn was in such bad shape was in 1992.
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