Yes. My cousins live in West Texas and joke that if E Arkansas doesn't get rain every other week we think we're in a drought.

The WA wheat harvest is underway:

Monday, 22/10/2007

The harvest in the drought-stricken midwest region of Western Australia has begun, but yield is expected to be just a quarter of an average year.

Retired CSIRO researcher, John Ive, who is also a wool grower near Yass, says there has been virtually no rain for three months, and evaporation rates are double the October average.

"We've already had about 170mm of evaporation which in average terms is running at about 8mm per day but normally we're at this time of year around about 4mm per day," he says.

"As a direct consequence of the high evaporation rates, soil moisture profiles are as dry as what they were at this time last year. We might remember last year was the driest since about 1944-45".

1/4 of 24 (generous) million tons.

6 million tons. Domestic consumption is over 5.

Arkansaw of Samuel L Clemens

My understanding is that the normal state of affairs geologically for the last several million years is one of ice dominating the northern hemisphere for 80,000 to 140,000 years at a time, broken by stretches of warm periods that run from 10,000 to 40,000 years in length. During these periods, both during the ice ages and during the warm ages, the geologic record tends to favor desert conditions throughout large swaths of North America. We have built civilization in North America upon a climatic outlier, because we didn't know any better. But ignorance on our account won't stop nature's return to its most common state.

"The greatest shortcoming of the human race is our inability to understand the exponential function." -- Dr. Albert Bartlett
Into the Grey Zone

“I had a fascinating time talking to engineers and maintenance people in New York City about what it takes to hold off nature…The name ‘Manhattan’ comes from an Indian term referring to hills. It used to be a very hilly island. Of course, the region was eventually flattened to have a grid of streets imposed on it. Around those hills there used to flow about 40 different streams, and there were numerous springs all over Manhattan island. What happened to all that water? There’s still just as much rainfall as ever on Manhattan, but the water has now been suppressed. It’s underground. Some of it runs through the sewage system, but a sewage system is never as efficient as nature in wicking away water. So there is a lot of groundwater rushing around underneath, trying to get out. Even on a clear, sunny day, the people who keep the subway going have to pump 13 million gallons of water away. Otherwise the tunnels will start to flood.”

That it would take only 2 days for the subway to flood indicates how contemporary civilisation is a mutable and organic construct which must fend constantly to maintain itself.

Within 7 days nuclear power plants would be ablaze. Within 2 years roads would have cracked open and within 10 years buildings would be pitted and scarred from the elements. As soon as 20 years after the disappearance of humanity the buried waterways would reassert themselves overground and Manhatten would become many islands with rivers taking on the rectangular grid pattern of the city. At the end of a 100 years almost all roofs would have collapsed. Within 300 years suspension bridges would have collapses. WIthin 5,000 years nuclear weapons would have corroded releasing radioactive plutonium...."

http://designresearchgroup.wordpress.com/2007/07/11/after-us-deep-time-p...

Arkansaw of Samuel L Clemens