Of all the states in the USA, Texas has been among the most reluctant to accept the reality of climate change. One more little piece of evidence for climate change finally came to the surface in Texas on Friday – or, more accurately, the surface came to it.
24 years ago, 2 men in a small airplane went missing. No one ever found them or their airplane, until Friday, when two teenagers in a canoe came across the wreckage in Lake Meredith, in northern Texas.
The teenagers could find the airplane, when nobody else had been able to for years and years and years, because there has been one very important change in Lake Meredith over the last 24 years: It has shrunk because an increasing lack of rain in the area – just the sort of climatic change associated with global warming that scientists have been predicting for the lower Midwest and Southwest United States for years.
Lake Meredith is currently at just 8 percent of its previous size.
So does tonights rains across the panhandle and south plains put a kink in the GW theory. Had the track od the tropical storm been just a little farther north, Lake Meredith might have gotten the 7 inches lus that Lubbock got and regained much of last several years losses.
Global warming will not eliminate rainfall from these areas entirely, just decrease the yearly average. Even 7 inches or more of rain from a tropical storm will not be enough to erase the deficit from months or years of below average rainfall. Besides, that much rain from one event will not recharge the aquifers, most of it simply runs off. While the reservoirs may show a temporary increase in capacity, without a steady replenishment from the underground aquifers, surface reservoirs will quickly drop again.