Word: drought
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...height of the two-year Western drought, youngsters skateboarded on the dry concrete bed of the Los Angeles River. Shasta Lake receded to less than one-fourth its normal size, stranding boats on the rocky bottom. Folsom Lake, usually 260 ft. deep, was a virtual mud flat. The normally roaring Stanislaus River near Sacramento turned into a trickle. Kent reservoir serving Marin County dropped by more than a third of its usual level. Warned Richard Felch of the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration: "We've got a good chance of another dust bowl...
...falling in California. Hard. Water came so abundantly to the dry and thirsty land that in the first six months of this year the state got 2½ times its normal amount of rainfall. The rains have been so plentiful that there would have been disastrous floods if the drought had not emptied streams, lakes and reservoirs...
...flourishing ranch lands, California cattlemen are talking about making money this year, after losing nearly $900 million because of the drought and reducing their herds from 5 million head to 4 million. Says William Staiger of the Cattlemen's Association: "Last year there was no grass and no water. When the rains came, the damn grass sprouted all over the place. We can rebuild the herds in three years...
...downpours have hurt the farmers, who raise vegetables ranging from artichokes to zucchini, in California's Central Valley. To survive the drought, farmers deepened existing wells or drilled new ones at a cost of $340 million. The rains partly replenished the valley's water table, but also flooded the fields. As a result, planting of strawberries, tomatoes and lettuce was delayed. Then, when the lettuce seeds were finally in the ground, many of them were washed away by subsequent downpours. The price of lettuce on the East Coast rose to a staggering $1 and even more per head...
...sudden infestation? According to entomologists, last year's drought killed wasps, robber flies and other predators that regularly dine on grasshoppers and their eggs. Then a moderately moist winter kept the eggs that were laid last fall from drying out, and a mild spring provided plenty of nourishing vegetation. Thus a vast progeny of grasshoppers was born...