by Joseph Malek

Created on: March 22, 2009   Last Updated: April 29, 2011

When the rainfall during the current year is less than the recorded average annual rainfall during a number of years prior to the current year in question you have a weather condition that is referred to as being less than normal. When there is little or no rainfall that event is referred to as being a drought. As a matter of fact, the continuation of such a drought can cause crop failures, lower the water table, dry up wells and literally cause animals and people to die of thrust. It seem that most or all living things need water in order to stay healthy and alive.

There is one link between the droughts in California and Argentina and that link is "Global Warming." The Tens of thousands of tons of carbon emissions that are spewed into the atmosphere by public utilities, factories and modes of transportation  is the primary cause for "Global Warming."

So too, a weather event that covers a large region of our World can also cause drought conditions to prevail within places that are most certainly thousands of miles apart from each other. Such a huge weather pattern can also cause rain to fall constantly on the same region in question.

As an example, the dust bowl, caused by a persistent and prolonged weather event in the mid-west section of the United States of America during the 1930's, caused many people to suffer and die. So too, their livestock died and their once productive soil was simply blow away during one or more of those very severe dust storms whose winds never seemed to stop.

Then again, in the case of California thousands of square miles of forest, trees and all, burned level to the ground. Homes were destroyed or damaged, even if their was an ample supply of drinking water. In spite of their best efforts to combat that drought, the State lacks the manpower, equipment and financial resources to fully maintain the public safety.

I know little about the drought situation in South America and particularly in Argentina, but I do know that such persistent weather patterns occurred in the past and I have no reason to believe that such events will not incur in the future. Is it by chance that both of those places now experience lack of rainfall? That too is possible in that there can be more than one high pressure area on the Pacific Ocean. Then again, they too can be kept in place for many weeks or even months, before the temperature and the jet stream cause each of them to drift away or even vanish with the change of the season.

There is one thing that I am sure about. That is, too much of a good thing can be just as bad as too much of a bad thing. In other words, if it rained constantly for weeks or even months, you better believe that homes would be washed away. Rivers would overflow their banks. The trees located in the forests, together with the soil within those places, would also be washed away.

Some say that "Global Warming" is responsible for such drastic changes of the World's climate. Only time will tell the story and Humanity truly has no way of causing rainfall to occur over a very large area of the landscape. Many factors play a part in the end result of rain or of drought, and if one or more of those factors do not exist to react with those other factors, there will be no rain or there will be too much rain.

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