Want a glass of ice water?

Hi neighbors. Are your air conditioners still operating? I've heard the repairmen are working overtime. If this is only one of the first indications of global warming, I'm moving to Alaska.

Before we all panic though, we need to remember this isn't the first drought and heat wave the country has endured. Actually, it isn't even the worst.

There may still be some of you who remember the Dust Bowl drought of the 1930s.

Unfortunately that drought came along with the Great Depression, another black cloud that covered the country.

The first year of the drought, a late freeze, violent storms and insect plagues, affected about 50 million acres of the Great Plains region.

The first dust storms, called "black blizzards," began in the fall of 1933. Dust particles blocked out the sun for days at a time. People had to keep their lights on during the day to see inside their homes.

Dirt blew under windowsill and through door jambs, settling on everything, including food, water, and machinery. People stuffed rags into cracks to block out the dust.

The drought continued with another two massive onslaughts until 1937 extending the dust storms as far east as New York City and covering ships in the Atlantic with dust.

About 350 million tons of fertile topsoil was blown away.

Livestock died of suffocation and starvation while crops barely grew.

Black drifts of dirt, like drifts of snow, formed around homes, blocked highways and railroad lines. Airports were closed. Paint was scoured off houses and automobiles by sand and silt. Huge electrical storms were caused by the dust that produced no rain. As many as a hundred separate dust storms were recorded in a single year in parts of Texas and Oklahoma. Hundreds died from respiratory problems, and thousands migrated and abandoned their farms.

In 1936, Congress passed the Soil Conservation Act, which offered agricultural and conservation education programs that encouraged "shelter belts," rows of trees planted as windbreaks. The drought finally ended by 1937.

More of you may remember America's next big drought in the 1950s when three years out of five drought conditions stretched coast to coast.

The 1950s drought was characterized by both low rainfall amounts and excessively high temperatures. Crop yields in some areas dropped by half, and hay prices soared. Excessive temperatures and low rainfall scorched grasslands typically used for grazing.

Once we survived that, along came the 60s with another drought. This one not only had no rain, high temperatures and the usual crop problems, but it also made us aware of new problems -- polluted ground water and lowering water reserves levels.

Fourteen states and a quarter of the American population were directly affected. Considered one of the most severe droughts in US history, the five year drought from 1961 to 1966 forced many communities to ration water use. Just as the Dust Bowl pointed out errors in farming, the drought of the 1960s pointed out the danger of pollutants seeping into ground water. Many people discovered their well water was undrinkable. The number of forest fires hit a new record during 1963.

Finally a new wind brought things back to normal and the usual seasonal rains returned to fall on land instead of being blown out over the ocean.

But then came the three year drought of 1987-1989. This "only" affected one third of the United States compared to the 70 percent of the country affected by the Dust Bowl.

The 1980s drought turned out to the most expensive natural disaster of any kind to affect the US till that time with total losses in energy, water, ecosystems and agriculture of over 39 billion dollars. Low water levels in the upper Mississippi River Basin caused major problems for barge navigation.

Heat waves during the summer of 1988 broke long-standing temperature records across the country.

With the thought of global warming and expanding deserts, we need to rethink some of our practices of pumping ground water to the point of depletion. People were taken by surprise in the 1980s, thinking that this just couldn't happen in our modern age.

Already aware that the natural resource of crude oil can simply "go away" we need to have more forethought concerning our most basic resource -- water! Until the next time friends remember, no one stops the wind and the rain only falls where it will.