Mark Gongloff: New York's freak 'flash drought' will become less freakish

Maybe it never rains in Southern California, but for about a month this fall it also never rained in New York City, which this week asked citizens to conserve water. Or Philadelphia. Or Dallas. Or several other U.S. cities that went from unusually wet in some cases to bone dry in a flash.

In fact, “flash drought” is the term for this sort of phenomenon. It joins “zombie fire,” “firenado” and “thundersnow” in the growing lexicon of freak weather events that normal, non-meteorologist people are having to learn as the climate grows hotter and more chaotic.

Normal droughts typically happen after long stretches of little or no rainfall. Flash droughts happen when a dearth of rainfall coincides with other factors, such as high temperatures and high winds, that suck moisture out of the ground. Sometimes they’re tied to La Niña weather patterns in the eastern Pacific Ocean. But we’re not in one of those yet, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

In the case of this fall’s flash drought, the U.S. has just ended its fourth-hottest summer ever, with cities from Phoenix to Fort Lauderdale to Caribou, Maine, suffering record-smashing highs. And then it simply stopped raining. New York, which typically gets about 4.5 inches of rain in October, got nada, leading Mayor Eric Adams to issue a drought watch for the city and giving new viral life to former Mayor Ed Koch’s must-see 1980 ad to “Keep New York City Wet.”

New Jersey, meanwhile, has been cosplaying as California, with much of the state on wildfire alert. Philadelphia had its first rainless October since at least 1872. Asheville, North Carolina, went from drowning in Hurricane Helene to getting less than an inch of rain in its 10th-driest October on record — a reminder of how wild and extreme the weather is becoming even in supposed climate havens.

In late October, more than 87% of the continental U.S. was under at least “abnormally dry” conditions, according to the U.S. Drought Monitor, the highest percentage on record going back 24 years. In June, only about a quarter of the continental U.S. was abnormally dry.

Of course, the weather isn’t climate, and flash droughts aren’t new. Climate change may not have caused the latest one. But climate change has already made flash droughts much more likely, according to a 2023 study in the journal Science. And they will grow even more frequent in the decades ahead if we keep spewing greenhouse gasses and heating the planet, according to a 2022 University of Oklahoma study.

The water shortages and wildfires that flash droughts fuel are dire enough for human health and safety. But they can also do significant economic damage. Low water levels hold up shipping on the Mississippi and other rivers. Crops suffer from the lack of moisture, and livestock don’t have enough to eat. This fall’s flash drought will keep cattle supply tight, according to the data-analysis firm DTN. That means higher prices at McDonald’s and the grocery store (unless everybody just cuts down on beef, which wouldn’t be a bad idea for their health, wallet or the climate).

Farmers, ranchers, shippers, policymakers and more will have to do a better job of anticipating and preparing for flash droughts — including being more careful about how much water we use, no matter where we are in the country. A lot of us (myself included) might have looked around at a bone-dry New York or Mississippi last month and said, “Hey, this isn’t normal.” But flash droughts are increasingly and uncomfortably the norm in a warming world. We still have the power to make sure they’re not total disasters, if we’re willing to use it.

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This column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the editorial board or Bloomberg LP and its owners.

Mark Gongloff is a Bloomberg Opinion editor and columnist covering climate change. He previously worked for Fortune.com, the Huffington Post and the Wall Street Journal.

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