I'm feeling kind of parched when I read this article...

In The New York Times on March 21, 2006, local meteorologists in Denver, Co., mentioned that although spring has begun, the drought that began in the late 1990s in the Midwest is not over. Regardless of multiple snowstorms and flooding rains, the drought seems to continue. Weather forecasters are not sure how long this will last; however, water supplies are draining low, causing problems with extinguishing forest fires.

"When two out of three, or three out of four years are bad, the issue that's being driven home is how much competition there is for water in the West," said Michael J. Hayes, a climate impacts specialist at the National Drought Mitigation Center at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln.

A similar occurrence with droughts was during the 1930s; coinciding with the Great Depression in the United States was the Dust Bowl in the Midwestern states. Extremely dry weather and a lack of precipitation created the "dust bowl effect", with swirling dirt, causing health problems.