Word: aridity
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...arrived with Mao and the Zhongyang, the Central Committee that rules the Communist Party of China. They came as a nomad encampment, several thousand men and women who promised to give new government to the China they had conquered. For two years, they had been wandering the arid northlands, pursued by Chiang Kai-shek's divisions. But Mao had raced his own best troops northeast to Manchuria to encircle and wipe out Chiang's forces. Next he deployed his other armies, first to wipe out the last of Chiang's elite divisions south of the Yellow River, then to seize...
...within a couple of hours' drive of the Mississippi, but there are ravaged zones all over. East in Indiana, a majority of the 1,173 farmers in desperately dry Newton County have lost more than half their crops to the drought. In west Texas, where it is always arid, farmers and ranchers are enduring the second year of drought; rainfall during the past year (4.83 in.) has been the skimpiest since 1892. There in Schleicher County, farmers during a decent season coaxed 26 bu. of wheat or one bale of cotton from each cultivated acre. This year, despite getting...
From India to South Africa, from Brazil to the Philippines, the vicious cycle of drought is having a devastating effect. Bush fires have scorched the arid ground in Ghana and Liberia; in Brazil hot winds from the east have made the desiccated ground still dryer. Some 2 million people are seriously undernourished in South Africa; 3 million in Ethiopia are totally dependent on emergency supplies. In India, where crops throughout 75% of the land have been ruined by a dry spell that in one state has lasted five years, Prime Minister Indira Gandhi has had to spend $600 million...
...wine-growing areas are mostly in the arid south-central part of the state, in the Yakima and Columbia valleys, just north of the 46th parallel (about the same latitude as Bordeaux and Burgundy). The vineyards are sheltered from the heavy rainfall in the western part of the state by the Cascade Mountains, much as Alsace is protected by the Vosges. During the growing season, the Washington vineyards enjoy cool nights and in June, 17 hours or more of not-too-intense sunlight daily, allowing the grapes to ripen with good sugar-acid balance. The fruit tends to be tarter...
...desert of Riverside County?to pull Angelenos out into the boondocks, where there is still room to grow and grow. Enzer is dubious: "How is anybody from Watts going to get to a job in Riverside if it opens up there?" Already, though, up north in an arid nowhere, a new, generic tract has sprung up: the development is called Le House...