drought (Page 11)

Suburban strip malls, office buildings and other paved areas make droughts worse by blocking billions of gallons of rainwater from seeping through the soil to replenish ground water. Atlanta, which is the most rapidly sprawling metropolitan area, loses enough water to supply the average household needs of up to 3.6 million people a year. Boston is next, with between 44 billion and 103 billion gallons of water lost. After that is Philadelphia, with 25 billion to 59 billion gallons of water unable to return to the soil.
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Central Florida has been invaded by giant 4-inch grasshoppers that are immune to pesticides and taste too bad to be eaten by predators. The Eastern lubber is yellow with red and black markings. It?s too fat to fly, but it can jump high and long. It has five eyes, viselike jaws and ever-moving mouth parts, and if you bother one, it will spread its wings and hiss at you. If you touch it, it ejects a stinky, irritating foam all over you. There are usually only a small number of lubbers around each year, due to lack of enough food and water. But the combination of a dry winter and summer rain has caused a huge increase in population.
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Recent bee attacks in Arizona have convinced some experts that drought may be making thirsty bees more aggressive. They could be moving into populated areas looking for water. “This is a very real problem,” says beekeeper Tom Martin, who thinks the situation will get worse if the drought continues. Three recent attacks, one of which killed a 46-year-old woman, have people worried. Cheryl McClain, who was allergic to bee stings, died after being stung 80 times by bees swarming outside her home. Her boyfriend was also stung many times, but managed to survive.
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In black and white noir films from the ?40s, every day seems gray and rainy. It turns out cities make their own weather and yes, it does rain more often in major cities.

NASA researchers used their Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission (TRMM) to study “urban heat-islands” and see if they create more summer rain than normal over major cities. The cities they studied included Atlanta, Dallas, San Antonio and Nashville.
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