The U.S. Southwest and Central Plains regions are likely to be scorched by a decades-long "megadrought" in the second half of this century if climate change continues unabated, scientists from NASA and Cornell and Columbia universities have warned.
I can only hope that the Steinbeck quote holds true and this is only the nadir of a multi-decade water cycle...And it never failed that during the dry years the people forgot about the rich years, and during the wet years they lost all memory of the dry years. It was always that way.
Link to article I grew up amongst the ruins of the Anasazi. I could never figure out why so many people would choose to settle in such a sun-blasted hellscape... it wasn't until well after college that people started talking about the fact that, well, it wasn't back then. New Mexico looked a lot more like Colorado backintheday. The "megadrought" has been hitting the Southwest for the past 15 years or more. Much of the SW was evergreen forest; it's in the process of switching to deciduous. Where I grew up used to be heavily wooded but what's coming back after the fire looks much more like high desert.