California’s Drought Is Over.
Hundreds of thousands of acres and countless structures have been destroyed in recent years in California as intense fire seasons have hit the state each summer.
And while a wet winter that dampened the state’s six-year drought may inspire hope that this fire season could be less severe, experts say that’s not the case.
But as the grass dries out this summer, it becomes prime fuel for the aggressive and fast-moving fires that have become so familiar in the Golden State.
Eight wildfires are currently burning thousands of acres in California.
Between Jan. 1 and June 25 this year, 2,135 fires have burned 20,249 acres in California, according to data from Cal Fire.
That’s slightly more than the same time frame in 2016, when 1,750 fires had burned 18,354 acres.
In total, 6,986 fires burned 564,835 fires in 2016.
But California still has several of its water restrictions it implemented over the last few years.
That delays the fire season for those areas — but it will likely return in the later months in the summer as the packs dry up, experts said.

A rainy, stormy pattern erases Alabama’s extreme drought.
It seemed like it would never end last year, but the drought is finally over.
Huntsville International Airport (the official climate reporting station for the city) shows a surplus of rainfall in 2017; June alone has a 2.20" surplus with more rain coming on Friday.
An active, rainy Spring plus the heavy rain from Tropical Storm Cindy finally did the drought in, and now only a sliver of Northwest Alabama is considered ‘abnormally dry’ (D0 level drought).
The wetter weather has also kept it cooler than normal!
Huntsville’s daily high temperature only topped 90ºF eleven times so far this summer; this time last year we already had 26 ninety-degree days.
Deep tropical moisture in the region through the weekend and next week means a daily dose of widely scattered, hit-or-miss, uneven, but still locally-heavy thunderstorms.
That moisture may also make it ‘feel’ a lot hotter than it looks!
Need some specifics about the weekend or next week?
They’re always online at WHNT.com/Weather and in the "Daily Forecast" section on Live Alert 19!

Spring Wheat Surges on Drought News.
Futures soared as much as 8.5 percent on Thursday, the most intraday since 2010, after Canada cut its planting outlook and drought conditions expand in U.S. growing states.
“With smaller wheat acres and some production issues in Canada, as well, that means there’s less product there to market, and demand has not backed off from what we can see.” Spring wheat futures for September delivery jumped by as much as the exchange’s 60-cent limit on Thursday, reaching a three-year high of $7.68 a bushel on the Minneapolis Grain Exchange.
Prices were at $7.50 at 12:43 p.m. local time.
Winter wheat futures in Chicago are surging, too.
The amount of land gripped by extreme drought expanded to just over 25 percent, up from about 8 percent a week ago.
A drought-busting rain isn’t yet in the forecast, said Alex Edwards, a National Weather Service meteorologist in Bismarck, North Dakota.
Withering Crops Canada’s wheat seeding fell 3.7 percent from a year earlier to 22.4 million acres, trailing the 23.2 million the government forecast in April and the 22.8 million expected by analysts in a Bloomberg News survey, Statistics Canada said Thursday.
Spring wheat futures may reach the $8-$10 range, Societe Generale SA analyst Rajesh Singla said in a Thursday report.
The Minneapolis exchange has set a trading volume record this month.

Drought-Resistant Crops?
Aussie Researchers Stumble onto Possible Solution.
Chloroplasts, the little green guys that turn sunlight into food for plants, may be the key to feeding people in the future.
Drought is a major natural threat to worldwide food production, but a team of Australian researchers say they have found a "completely unexpected" to use chloroplasts to make crops 50 percent more drought resistant.
"Chloroplasts are actually capable of sensing drought stress and telling the leaves to shut-up and prevent water from being lost during drought stress,” Kai Chan, a biologist at Australian National University, told the Australian Broadcasting Company.
The team was able to use the chloroplast signal to stimulate a barley plant’s cells and close the pores, Xinhua reports.
They found that enhancing the chloroplast signal on the cells, the barley survived in drought conditions 50 percent longer.
"We have got very strong reason to believe that this ability is also present in other major crops like rice and wheat," Chan told ABC.
Chan told ABC he was working to develop a chemical spray to boost the chloroplast signal that closes pores on plant leaves.
This story does not necessarily represent the position of our parent company, IBM.

Q-C arborists: Most area trees are surviving drought, insects.
Despite invasive insects and drought conditions, trees in the Quad-Cities are healthy overall, and communities are working to keep them that way.
The biggest problem facing Davenport trees remains emerald ash borers, said city arborist Chris Johnson.
Though Moline has 535 ash trees, park operations manager Greg Johnson said the city hasn’t had any trouble with emerald ash borers.
Until he sees changes, he said he expects Rock Island’s trees to continue doing well and offer good canopy cover.
Broken branches, fallen limbs and other such tree hazards need immediate attention, he said.
Chris Johnson said drought also has affected Davenport trees, with some dying this year because of drought stress from the summer of 2012.
Chris Johnson said he expects some local residents will be surprised by how extensive the drought and emerald ash borer damage is in Davenport.
"I still talk to people on almost a weekly basis who have never heard of the emerald ash borer," he said.
"We’re trying to, obviously, replace trees," Greg Johnson said.

Drought in Northern China Is Worst on Record, Officials Say.
Officials governing a large area of northern China say their region is suffering from the worst drought on record, leading to crops wilting and farmers and herders growing desperate to get water to farmlands, grasslands, animals and their households.
In recent years, Chinese scientists have attributed extreme weather patterns in China, and especially in northern China, to climate change.
The region of Inner Mongolia and its residents have been hit especially hard by wide fluctuations in the weather.
The United States is historically the world’s largest emitter of greenhouse gases, while China is currently the largest one.
Another large municipal area, Tongliao, has also been severely affected.
Photographs by Xinhua, the state news agency, show crops in dry soil and farmers spraying their fields with water.
At the time, 5.5 million people had joined in efforts to alleviate the drought, Mr. Chen said.
The Chinese government has made great efforts to try to halt or turn back the growth of deserts in northern China, and especially in Inner Mongolia.
The Chinese government has also tried to limit the movements of herders, saying their animals are turning grasslands into desert.

Drought Watch: Patchy dryness in Flint Valley; North Fla. drought-free.
MIDWAY, Fla. (WTXL) — The active rainy season in Florida and Georgia has effectively wiped away any excessive dryness and drought conditions for the region.
The June 29 Drought Monitor update eliminated all drought categories from the state of Florida.
One month ago, extreme drought existed in east-central Florida, and Moderate Drought was placed over the Suwannee Valley.
Ample tropical moisture plus the timely start of the summertime rain cycle in the state created above-average rainfall amounts, and made the Sunshine State free of drought for the first time since July 2016.
In southern Georgia, generous rain also occurred, knocking the drought levels down to isolated patches of abnormal dryness in the Flint River valley.
Tropical Storm Cindy contributed to rainfall in the Southeast that nearly doubled the average amounts for June in some sections.
Other Abnormally Dry areas are confined to a section of north-central Georgia and northeastern Mississippi.
The worst drought conditions in the U.S. are located in the High Plains states, particularly North and South Dakota.
Wildfires flaring in Arizona and southern California are occurring in Moderate Drought situations there.

Drought conditions in the northern U.S. Plains that have propelled spring wheat prices to a three-year high worsened in the past week and there are forecasts for more hot and dry weather that could crimp the harvest.
As the world struggles with a glut of grain that has filled inventories to record-highs and cast a wet blanket over the corn and bean markets, the shortage of high-quality spring wheat has taken markets by surprise.
The weekly U.S. Drought Monitor, produced by a consortium of climatologists, on Thursday showed that 25 percent of North Dakota was classified as being in "extreme drought," up from 7.7 percent a week earlier.
MGEX spring wheat futures jumped another 5.1 percent on Thursday, hitting a peak of $7.59-3/4 a bushel.
"The top has been taken off," said North Dakota State University extension agronomist Joel Ransom, referring to the crop’s harvest potential.
"We are kind of fixed that we cannot get back to trend line for sure."
Conditions are going to be deteriorating once again across that area."
Temperatures also were expected to rise, Tapley added, and will likely be above normal for the next 10 days.
The drought has been devastating to hardest hit ranchers in the regions reeling from rising hay costs and withered grazing pastures, said experts.
(Additional reporting by Julie Ingwersen and Theopolis Waters; Editing by Marguerita Choy)

Women take southern India’s drought into their own hands – one shovel at a time.
Sowbhagyamma is one of dozens of women working under the scorching sun every day to clear weeds, mud, and pebbles from a 6.5-acre plot in the Mandya District of southern Karnataka state, India.
Three thousand women are enrolled in the effort to revive lakes, ponds, and irrigation tanks in 31 villages across the district – crucial work in a region facing drought for the third year in a row, the worst in decades.
‘We have to do something and do it fast’ The women in Mandya decided to revive age-old methods of water storage, like desilting lakes and ponds, to replenish groundwater and ensure water for irrigation.
On any given day, about 30 women take to the waterbeds, now dry, using spades and shovels to dig up silt and mud.
But soon, people saw the value of what the 67-year-old woman was doing.
“But, we insisted that they should pay for work related to water bodies.
Their next fight was to get the authorities to pay them on time – which some women say continues to be a battle.
Women’s work?
“Instead of working on water bodies which help in the irrigation of lands, they should first work on those tanks that provide drinking water,” so women do not have to walk as many miles to fetch water, he says.

For first time in more than a year, Alabama is drought free.
The heavy rain last week from Tropical Storm Cindy washed away the last remnants of Alabama’s devastating 2016 drought.
For the first time in more a year, the state has no area that is classified as being in drought, according to the U.S. Drought Monitor at the University of Nebraska.
The drought monitor report is released each Thursday.
The last time Alabama was drought free was the April 26, 2016 report.
But the rain from Cindy vanquished the last dry spots.
A tiny sliver of northwest Alabama, covering 1.53 percent of the state, is still classified as abnormally dry.
The drought conditions peaked late last year with 100 percent of the state being in drought conditions for eight straight weeks from Oct. 25 to Dec. 13.
It was the first time the entire state was under drought conditions since 2007.
The drought – the worst of which occurred in the northern half of the state – ruined crops last year and caused an array of problems for cattle farmers who had no water for their livestock and no grass growing for grazing.