MORE UNPRECEDENTED SEVERE CLIMATE ACROSS US / "I came here when I was six or seven years old – he says – I’m now 88 and this is the first time that it’s been dry."
Extreme heat and drought are spreading across 14 states in the US. From Arizona all the way to Florida, it's as if the entire South of the country were burning from below, adding pressure to states and towns already struggling to recover from the financial crisis and high unemployment. We just traveled to Oklahoma, where 40 per cent of the State is under exceptional drought. The pain began in October of 2010 and experts expect it to worsen.
Farmers and cattle ranchers are suffering the most in a state that has been hit hard in the past by exceptional waves of dry weather. Most famously in the 1930s, during the so called Dust Bowl, massive dust storms drove 2.5 million people out of America’s Plains states looking for relief out West. Ted Tripp was a young Oklahoman boy during the Dust Bowl but says he’s never seen the small lake behind his house empty. "I came here when I was six or seven years old – he says – I’m now 88 and this is the first time that it’s been dry."
Farmers and cattle ranchers are suffering the most in a state that has been hit hard in the past by exceptional waves of dry weather. Most famously in the 1930s, during the so called Dust Bowl, massive dust storms drove 2.5 million people out of America’s Plains states looking for relief out West. Ted Tripp was a young Oklahoman boy during the Dust Bowl but says he’s never seen the small lake behind his house empty. "I came here when I was six or seven years old – he says – I’m now 88 and this is the first time that it’s been dry."
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