Man drives hours to bring water to elephants during drought.
TSAVO, Kenya – For years, Patrick Kilonzo Mwalua has been helping to address the drought problem in his community.
He drives a water truck to the driest areas, hoping to provide the precious commodity for animals that need it.
This year in Tsavo, Kenya, the rainfall was particularly dismal, causing an extreme shortage of water.
Mwalua has set up a GoFundMe page in the hopes of raising enough money to meet the increased need for water.
Mwalua plans on renting more water trucks to deliver 12,000 liters (over 3,100 gallons) of water at least four times a week, every week, until the drought is over.
In the past, such drought resulted in mass deaths of wildlife.
Of particular concern to Mwalua is the death of elephants.
“Elephants are becoming endangered from poaching, and we need to save the ones we have left by providing water for them until the drought peril is over,” says Mwalua on his GoFundMe page.
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In Drought-Stricken Somalia, Starving Mothers Forced To Choose Which Child To Feed.
“If there’s a very small amount of food, we give it to those who need it the most — the youngest,” Abdille told Reuters this week from the capital Mogadishu, where her family recently fled after their herd of goats died from starvation.
Across Somalia, families like Abdille’s have shared their stories of inconceivable suffering as a prolonged drought, combined with the effects of the country’s ongoing civil war with the Islamist militant group al-Shabab, continues to drive extreme shortages of food and water.
Last week, more than 100 people in a single region of Somalia died over two days because of famine and diarrhea.
United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, who arrived in Somalia on Tuesday on an emergency visit, said he was stunned by the rampant misery he witnessed.
The WHO reported that nearly 5.5 million people are at risk of cholera.
People are dying.
Thousands of Somali refugees will also be affected by Trump’s revised ban, which suspended the U.S. refugee program for 120 days.
And climate change has, in recent years, brought increasing drought ― and food insecurity ― to the region.
“We need to make as much noise as possible,” Guterres said this week, calling for global assistance for millions of suffering Somalis.

What led to California’s drought-busting rain this winter?.
“It has been a very interesting winter across most of the United States with very stormy and chilly weather in the West,” AccuWeather Long-Range Forecaster Jack Boston said.
La Niña occurs when ocean water temperature are below normal across the central and eastern Pacific Ocean near the equator.
However, there are many other phenomena that occur that can influence the global weather pattern besides La Niña or El Niño.
“The factor that has caused all of the storminess in California this season seems to be an unusual sea surface temperature distribution in the Pacific Ocean,” Boston said.
While El Niño usually favors stormy weather for California, warm water off the coast sent the systems on a more northerly track, missing out on the drought-stricken state.
Water temperatures in this region fell drastically since last winter, allowing storms to track farther south and drop heavy rain and mountain snow over California.
The heavy rain and mountain snow was a double-edged sword for the state, helping to alleviate the severe drought but also triggering flooding, mudslides and avalanches.
Officials also opened the spillway to the Don Pedro water reservoir for the first time in 20 years to prevent water from flowing over the dam’s uncontrolled spillway.
“The rain and snow this winter, especially during January, was a huge help in the short and long-term drought,” AccuWeather Western Weather Expert Ken Clark said.

Warmer, drier winter raises concern over lingering drought impact on Northeast’s 2017 growing season.
Days and days of clear winter skies, much warmer-than-normal winter temperatures and scant snowpack accumulation do not bode well for the coming Northeast growing season – especially with drought conditions impacting parts of the region for nearly two years.
That’s the bottom-line summary of data from the U.S. Drought Monitor as of early March.
But will that drought pattern continue to hang over the Northeast this year?
Only time will tell.
“But much warmer-than-normal temperatures rapidly melted a significant amount of New England snowpack.
That deadline is March 15 for corn, soybeans and other spring-planted crops.
• Weigh reducing corn populations to reduce plant moisture stress on more drought-susceptible soils.
• Consider planting soybeans; yes, even in New England.
The best advice is saved for last: Talk with the smartest crop consultant you know about reducing your crop risks.

Thousands forced to move as drought strikes Puntland.
Puntland, Somalia – Puntland is on the edge of famine, according to aid agencies working in this semi-autonomous state in Somalia’s arid north.
Between 20,000 and 27,000 nomadic pastoralists have been forced to travel hundreds of miles to reach coastal regions of Puntland where there was a flash of rain in December last year.
There has been no rain since.
The displacement has forced families to separate, leaving women, children and the elderly to find help in makeshift displacement camps on the edges of towns where water-borne diseases are spreading and living conditions are dire.
The Horn of Africa is in the midst of the harshest and most prolonged drought in decades.
Swaths of Somalia, already one of the world’s most fragile territories, are facing famine just six years after one last ravaged the country, killing 260,000 people.
Abdullahi Farah is sheltering at Shaxade displacement site after leaving her home in southern Puntland when most of her animals died and her husband was forced to move the remaining herds to the coast.
She built her own shelter and brought her youngest children with her.
[Ashley Hamer/Al Jazeera]

Drought warning issued for central Maryland; Eastern region under drought watch.
BALTIMORE (WBFF) – A drought warning was issued for central Maryland on Thursday, by the Maryland Department of the Environment (MDE).
After a drought warning is issued, the MDE increases oversight of water supply conditions and encourages citizens and businesses to use less water.
Baltimore, Carroll, Cecil, Frederick, Harford, Howard and Montgomery counties are covered by the warning, except for areas served by the Baltimore City or Washington Suburban Sanitary Commission public water systems.
Brush fires broke out in several counties under the drought warning Thursday, amid dry and windy conditions.
"Water conservation and efficiency are always smart especially during extended periods of reduced rainfall," said Maryland Secretary of the Environment Ben Grumbles.
According to the MDE, central region rainfall since Sept. 30, 2016, is on average 6.5 inches below normal, or about 61% of normal.
Rainfall in the Eastern region since Sept. 30, 2016, is on average 4.7 inches below normal, or about 71% of normal, MDE said.
While under the drought warning, conditions in the affected jurisdictions will be evaluated weekly.
In assessing and issuing warnings on drought conditions, the state uses the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers’ definition of drought: "periods of time when natural or managed water systems do not provide enough water to meet established human and environmental uses because of natural shortfalls in precipitation or stream flow."

It’s a major natural disaster that slowly grows in one place and then moves across a region, gaining intensity and size.
As it spreads, it destroys land, ruins agriculture and tears apart communities, and it can kill people.
Researchers are just beginning to view droughts as this type of dynamic force, and some hope that soon they will be monitored similarly to hurricanes — with scientists able to predict their development, helping to protect those living in their path.
Ten percent of droughts travel between 1,400 to 3,100 kilometers from where they begin, according to a recent study.
The study, which analyzed 1,420 droughts between 1979 and 2009, identified "hot spots" around the world and common directions in which droughts move.
Some droughts in the southwest United States, for example, tend to move from south to north.
In Central Africa, droughts tend to go southeastern toward the coast.
"It can start somewhere, move throughout the continent, and obviously cause harm throughout its way," Julio Herrera-Estrada, a doctoral candidate at Princeton University and leader of the study, said Thursday.
They can cause a loss of agriculture, wildlife, wetlands and human life, according to the National Drought Mitigation Center in Lincoln, Nebraska.
Very costly They are also one of the most expensive natural disasters that people face today, according to Herrera-Estrada, who collaborated on the study with the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis in Vienna.

Mass.
Dry conditions continue to recede in New England, researchers said Thursday, announcing that Massachusetts and Connecticut are both free of extreme drought.
The US Drought Monitor, a collaboration of federal and academic researchers, said much of the region remains unusually dry, with swaths still under the slightly less bleak designation of severe drought.
“Long-term conditions are still very dry, but the region has seen a response from the impact of melting snow and rain,” researchers said, adding that New England has a good chance for above average precipitation in coming days.
The Quabbin Reservoir remains at 81 percent of its capacity, and it has hovered around that level for months.
Frederick A. Laskey, executive director of the Massachusetts Water Resources Authority, said in an interview that the size of the reservoir, one of the largest in the nation, makes it less responsive to weather changes.
“The Quabbin is so large that it goes down very slowly and it comes back very slowly,” he said, “We’re holding our own.
We’re waiting for some late winter heavy storms or some spring heavy rains.” Some communities’ smaller reservoirs have gained more from recent precipitation, Laskey said, but he noted that those also lost a greater percentage of their water during the stubborn dry spell.
Andy Rosen can be reached at andrew.rosen@globe.com.
Follow him on Twitter at @andyrosen.

Drought over?
San Juan Water District says yes.
​GRANITE BAY, Calif. (KCRA) — The San Juan Water District is calling on the governor to rescind California’s drought emergency declaration.
The district argued the state should no longer be under a drought emergency because of the exceptional rainfall totals this season.
That means customers are still prohibited from wasting water, but there aren’t any specific conservation targets.
“With wetter-than-normal conditions in the Sacramento Valley beginning in 2016, the State was no longer experiencing a statewide drought emergency,” said San Juan Water District Board president Ken Miller.
“Our customers did a fantastic job of reducing their water use when the drought threatened our supplies in 2014 and into 2015.
"As the governor said in a press conference on Feb. 24, he will consider whether to rescind the statewide drought emergency declaration at the end of the rainy season.
Among the factors he’ll consider are precipitation, reservoir, snowpack and groundwater levels," Barnum said.
The board said it would revisit the regulation in May and consider repealing it based on a more complete picture of water supply conditions at the end of the rainy season."

Study: Droughts Can Travel Like a Slow-Moving Hurricane.
Depending on the continent, some droughts move 800 to 1,900 miles from what researchers are calling hotspots.
From that data, the researchers located as many as four hotspots from each continent.
In North America, on average it takes 16 months for a drought to migrate 500 miles.
In North America, hotspots do not seem to favor a particular region of the continent, but droughts do typically move toward the north from the southwestern United States.
Movement of the droughts is erratic on most continents, except in Australia where drought tends to travel toward the north.
Since there is less water to evaporate from a drought-stricken area, there is less water available to fall out as rain or snow downwind.
In the first scenario, a ridge or dome of high pressure may move slightly from region to region over time while creating dry conditions underneath it.
In the second scenario, the weather patterns that result from El Niño often breed areas of drier conditions in some parts of the globe.
In the United States, the Ohio Valley is often a location where drier than average conditions set up.