# 118
“Timing”
IN DEFENSE OF COMMON SENSE
By Hetty Gray
July 31, 2012
With the problems attendant to the drought, there is little to boost my sense of humor, but the silver lining may — nonetheless — be alive and well. Every modicum of nature has its own rhythm. Life itself has a rhythm undeterred and undefeated by time.
The weather patterns that three or four generations consider “normal” are but a reflection of anything to which we become accustomed. In 1995 my husband and I were privy to a wonderful speaker whose expertise was western hemisphere weather.
He set forth a set of facts that amazed me and I wish I knew where to find them so I could put them down for you to read.
In short, he explained that the weather from about 1900 until 1995 had held incredibly constant. Any constancy over that amount of time becomes so rooted in the human psyche that an aberration from that constancy is alarming. He told us that the extremes experienced by the pioneers constitute “normal weather” for this area of the world.
Although dry years do occur over time, he saw a distinct pattern in the seeming chaos of meteorology.
What’s more, he cited a precise cycle. He told us that, beginning in 1936, severe drought strikes every nineteen years. His research found that major US droughts occurred in 1936, 1955, 1974, and 1993.
Add another nineteen — and VOILA! — you get 2012.
If nothing else, the time frame gives me hope that next year bodes far better for those of us in agriculture to lessen harsh burdens of the rapid food price rises that certainly face Americans in short order. Oh, I know that forecasters claim prices will go up after the first of the year; but there’s a good chance your grocery bills will rise much sooner than that.
Ranchers and farmers are forced to sell off their animals at lower weights because feed costs will be very high. Cattle, chickens and hogs thrive on corn. Because drought impacts corn yields to a high degree, you can count on our talented and resourceful farmers and ranchers to do amazing things aided by modern technology. Yet these folks operate at the caprice of Mother Nature, and she can be less than kind.
If that climatologist’s pattern continues to hold, we can breathe a bit easier
— at least for nineteen years.