Word: subsoil
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...American jet stream will keep behaving, so that eventually rainstorms will be lured up from the Gulf to drench the croplands. Kentucky and Tennessee last week got a bit of that action. But many more downpours are needed. Iowa's rich loam has only a third of the usual subsoil moisture. Hydrologists have warned New York that if reservoirs do not fill soon, the city could have water shortages this summer. With California reservoirs at 42% capacity, farmers are being told to expect only 60% of their water needs, and even less if rains don't come...
...pumping of so much water out of the subsoil has caused parts of the city to sink, in some places as much as 30 ft., a process worsened by periodic earthquakes. The redoubtable Palace of Fine Arts, which looks rather like some turn-of-the-century world's fair pavilion made of vanilla ice cream, has sunk nearly 10 ft. since it was completed in 1934. The 16th century church of San Francisco, which has sunk 5 ft., can be approached only by going down a flight of stone stairs. At the shrine of Our Lady of Guadalupe, just...
When did modern art begin? It is impossible to fix a date; the roots are too tangled in the subsoil of the 19th century. But one can point to some crucial events of its growth. One of them happened in France in the late 1880s, within a group of painters-some now familiar to us as secular saints or movie heroes, others still relatively ill-known -who kept venturing out of Paris toward more "primitive" places. Paul Gauguin and Emile Bernard ranged among the megaliths, the cold heather and the gaunt folk-Christs in Brittany. Vincent van Gogh pursued what...
...farm machinery, stiff anticipated hikes in the price of diesel fuel, and, of course, the weather. The grain belt's perennial Cassandras are already predicting terrible weather for the spring and summer. This time, though, they have real reason for worry. Last summer's drought left the subsoil in the lower wheat-growing states of Kansas, Oklahoma and Texas seriously dehydrated. Another dry summer would cut yields in these areas significantly, and the outlook for rain is not good. Says Iowa's agricultural climatologist Paul Waite: "When a dry spell goes over a year, it is likely...
...drought extends back almost a year, right through a mild winter with little snow and a dry spring. Now the subsoil is starved for moisture. South Dakota's grasslands, for example, never had a chance to turn green; they are sere and yellow. Crops planted in the spring-oats, barley, durum, hard red wheat and even some corn-have been stunted by the scorching sun. Under normal conditions, they would be knee-high by this time. In many cases, they have, in fact, grown barely six inches tall...