Update on Drought

In a post I published July 19, 2012 titled, "We Should Pray for Rain", I said that we should pray that God gives the United States more rain to help alleviate the drought. Here is a link to that post:
http://ptgbook.blogspot.com/2012/07/we-should-pray-for-rain.html

Much of the United States is still in drought, but conditions have improved in the last four months because of the abundance of rain and snow much of the country has had. We are still in drought because it takes time for moisture to be replenished in the soil, but there has been substantial improvement.

Here are figures from the United States Drought Monitor for conditions May 7, 2013 compared with January 1, 2013, a little more than four months. I have rounded percentage figures to the nearest percent. Figures are for the whole United States.

The amount of the country that is free from drought has increased from 29% to 44%.

Abnormally dry or worse drought areas have decreased from 71% to 56% of the area of the entire United States.

Moderate or worse drought areas have decreased from 51% to 41%.

Severe or worse drought areas have decreased from 35% to 28%.

Extreme or worse drought areas have decreased from 18% to 12%.

Exceptional drought areas have decreased from 6% to 4%.

Here is a link to the table in the Drought Monitor site where I got these figures today, May 12, 2013:
http://droughtmonitor.unl.edu/DM_tables.htm?conus

Here is a link to the Drought Monitor home page which gives maps of where the drought is located:
http://droughtmonitor.unl.edu/monitor.html

Here is a link to an animation showing the change in the drought map over 12 weeks:
http://droughtmonitor.unl.edu/12_week.gif

A video about the drought in the Weather Channel's weather.com site seems somewhat misleading to me. For some reason, they keep comparing current figures with figures from a year ago to show how much worse things are. But a year ago the United States was not in a bad drought yet. They are not showing the positive progress over the last three months. Also, they focus on particular areas where drought has gotten worse but not on areas where drought has lessened. It is my impression they are painting an overly negative picture - I don't know why they would do that. I found nothing in this video that mentions the overall improvement over the last three months. For this link, you may have to scroll down to find the video on "The Latest on Drought":
http://www.weather.com/video/amazing-warm-up-ahead-36696?collid=/news/top-stories

This is not a direct link to the video, so over time their videos on this page will change. If you read this post several weeks from now, the video I refer to may be gone or replaced.

I give thanks to God for the improvement in drought conditions that have occurred over the last three months. But we still need more rain, especially in the southwest.

Drought can reduce crop yields and hurt the American economy. A time will come when God will use weather to severely punish the United States, either shortly before or during the great tribulation. "I will make your heavens like iron and your earth like bronze" (Leviticus 26:19). God can bring this country down by withholding the rain.

But there is a pattern God seems to follow. Before He punishes, He warns. He has given the Church of God the job of warning the people of the United States, but few have heard that warning. We have not finished the job of getting that warning out, and the warning should come first before the punishment so the people know that God was fair to warn them. There are millions of members of traditional churches that are religious and think they are serving and obeying God and don't know they are doing wrong in their traditional practices. The punishment is for them too, but they need a warning first.

Until that warning goes out to everyone, I pray that God will protect and bless the United States and protect our economy and our freedoms so the Church of God can get that warning out and the true gospel with increasing power.

I continue to pray that God will give us more rain in the areas that need it.

On the subject of weather and climate, I found this article interesting. It is titled, "Climate Scientists Struggle to Explain Warming Slowdown". Apparently, global warming is not occurring as fast as scientists thought it would. Link:
http://www.weather.com/news/science/environment/climate-scientists-warming-slowdown-20130416


Here is a related post in this blog titled, "Good News - Snow and Rain Reduce Drought Conditions", published March 5, 2013. The videos that post links to are no longer available though. Link:
http://ptgbook.blogspot.com/2013/03/good-news-snow-and-rain-reduce-drought.html