In recent years, I have received texts from my sister expressing concern about highly impactful weather events. Is this a sign of things to come? Usually, I try to calm her nerves. Today, a woman in my wife's competing chorus asked if the world was coming to an end. She was halfway serious.

As of late, the focus has been on recent dryness, record heat, and tornadoes outside the usual places. In Arkansas (where I live), burn bans are posted in fifty five of seventy five counties. Little Rock experienced the earliest (in the year) 90 degree day (March 22nd) since records began in the 1870s. A tornado rated F3/EF3 or higher had never occurred in Michigan before the second week in March, but it happened this year. Indiana has tallied more tornadoes than Texas and Florida. All of these examples are eyebrow raisers, and deserve our attention. However, I'm focused on longer term issues that are going to be life changing and difficult to resolve (without a lot of rain).

For the first time since 2013, there are water restrictions in Denver, CO. Sprinklers can only be used twice a week on designated days at certain hours (and not until May). Water will not be served at restaurants unless it is requested. Demand is overwhelming supply (due to dryness and a lack of snowpack), and something had to be done. It's worse in South Texas. Four straight years of below to well below average precipitation combined with a booming oil and gas industry and accelerated water consumption has drained Lake Corpus Christi to less than ten percent capacity. The city of Corpus Christi, TX has turned to Choke Canyon Reservoir (seventy miles to the northwest) to keep faucets running, and it is already woefully low. Nearby Three Rivers, TX depends on the latter pool for its citizens, and will likely have to go elsewhere. The easy fix is a hurricane, but relying on luck is an unrealistic strategy. Finally, the federal government has intervened in a squabble between seven states (Arizona, California, Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico, Utah, and Wyoming) on how water in the Colorado River (which is slowly shrinking) will be managed moving forward. Attempting to share a basic human need and negotiating who gets what has been predictably desperate and heated. Whatever decisions are made will affect a staggering forty million people.

Imagine you were told there was no more water in your community, or you opened the spigot and nothing flowed. Emotions would run the gamut between moderate anxiety and full-on panic, right? For some of us, that is already a reality, and indications are there is more of this to come. Long story short, I’m afraid my sister might be right.