The drought in Louisiana is so bad right now it has evoked country music comparisons, typically only used during exceptionally dire times.

“You heard that Hank Williams lyric, ‘The Mississippi River, she’s a-goin’ dry?’” asked Louisiana’s commissioner of Agriculture and Forestry Mike Strain. “That’s how bad it is. This is one of the most severe droughts we’ve seen, certainly in my generation. It’s happening in lots of places nationwide.”

The drought, described as record-breaking and historical in Mississippi, Louisiana, and Texas, peaked just as the federal government’s long-awaited Fifth National Climate Assessment was released Tuesday. It noted that while dangerous emissions in the U.S. have slowly decreased, they’re not happening fast enough to counter our warming planet.

The 144-page report offered a grave outlook and noted that the effects of climate change are becoming more tangible and easier to notice in communities across the country. Scientists are now more confident that the climate crisis is causing severe and frequent rainstorms, hurricanes, wildfires, drought and deadly heat.

America’s shifting drought

In recent years, drought has been a big issue in California, while the Southeast remains one of the wettest regions in the country. But in the second half of 2023, those roles have somewhat reversed. California, aided by numerous heavy rainstorms and snow in the early part of the year, has come out of its years-long drought. Most areas in Oregon and Washington are still in severe to extreme drought as of early November.

A vast majority of regions east of California, from Arizona to the Florida panhandle, are experiencing severe drought or worse, according to the U.S. Drought Monitor, a map produced by the University of Nebraska-Lincoln in partnership with several federal agencies. Some areas along that route have gone months without more than an inch of rain.

The Mississippi River, which is drying up in parts throughout its snaking 2,340-mile course, is so dry that saltwater from the Gulf of Mexico is coming up the river, killing plants and animals, destroying crops and infrastructure and affecting water quality for the millions who rely on the river for drinking water. Every water gauge along the 400-mile stretch from the Ohio River to Jackson, Mississippi, is at or below the low-water threshold.

The drought and the state of the Mississippi River are also causing widespread concern in the Midwest about water supply and barge deliveries. The region and the High Plains are also suffering severe to exceptional drought. The High Plains region consists of parts of Montana, Wyoming, South Dakota, Nebraska, Colorado, Kansas, New Mexico, Oklahoma and Texas.

Some Midwestern towns are drier than they were during the Dust Bowl, a period in the 1930s when millions of acres of farmland became useless and hundreds of thousands of people were displaced. It was brought on by severe drought and poor farming practices that left the land vulnerable to wind erosion. It’s considered one of the worst man-made ecological disasters in U.S. history.

The monitor also notes that severe drought conditions observed in Louisiana and Mississippi have continued eastward across Alabama, western Georgia, Florida’s panhandle, and Big Bend. This has caused particular issues for farmers and foresters trying to adapt to unpredictable weather from year to year.

“Many of our crops are down this year,” said Commissioner Strain. “Cotton is down 10%, while the acreage used is down about 40% as some were given up for planting corn. We’ve seen losses in rice and soybeans as well.”

Because of warmer spring weather, many of the farmers in Louisiana have fortunately been able to plant earlier in the season, including corn, according to Commissioner Strain. It means corn can reach the fertilization stage without encountering summer’s severe and damaging heat. He also noted that temperature shifts and water availability will eventually force farmers to plant different crops or plant their regular crops at other times of the year.

“We have to innovate if we’re going to survive,” he added. “We have to work with our agricultural centers and research institutions to develop more climate resilient crops that can produce more with less water and less inputs of all types and develop a good understanding of water availability.”

Farmers haven’t had it as bad in Alabama, depending on what crops they’re growing. The Alabama Farmers Federation (ALFA) said it had been a great year for corn in the state and may be a record yield.

”However, there are areas, particularly in south Alabama, where it’s been a very poor year for crops,” said Mary Wilson, ALFA’s communications outreach director. “Peanuts are the most impacted of the crops. The ground was so hard it was tough to get them out. Some cotton farmers experienced greatly reduced yields, particularly in the southern half of the state.”

Wilson said that cotton growers in the northern part of the state enjoyed an average or above-average crop, adding that Alabama sometimes has dry and wet years but was overall in good shape.

Because of drought, Alabama has declared a burn ban throughout the state, hoping to avoid devastating wildfires that have been seen in other states. Around 70% of the state is forested, giving it the fifth largest stock in the country behind Vermont, West Virginia, New Hampshire and Maine.

But when it comes to forests, drought can have lasting effects.

“The effects of drought can be seen now through the brown needles covering many of the pine trees,” said Thomas Reddick, executive director of the Alabama Forest Land Trust, a non-profit conservation organization that enhances, promotes, and preserves the productivity and sustainability of Alabama’s privately owned forests. “However, the real impact of drought won’t really be seen for a few years. Pine trees are resilient, but a drought like this puts a lot of stress on the tree which makes it susceptible to disease and pests that can kill the tree later.”

Reddick added that while Alabama has a robust timber industry, periods of drought may force landowners to bring their timber to market sooner than planned because pests may render the timber useless. The rush to harvest can also drive prices down for landowners. If the trees die, they significantly add to the risk of fire.

Why are we experiencing drought?

The question of why the Southeast is experiencing such exceptional levels of drought is not simple.

Jeff Graschel, a Louisiana-based hydrologist with the National Weather Service, attributes the drought to a high-pressure pattern that locked in over the region during summer. While that can happen, this current instance has resulted in extreme dryness.

“For Louisiana, Mississippi, it’s pretty historic,” he said. “We’re about 25 to 28 inches of rain behind normal for this time of year. It’s the highest threshold of drought we’ve seen in a long time.”

What’s unusual is that the region should have been much wetter because of the El Niño weather pattern, which historically dumps more rain on the Southeast thanks to the jet stream coming out of the Pacific Ocean.

El Niño is a tropical warm water zone extending through the Pacific toward South America. That warm water affects the atmosphere, altering wind patterns and the jet stream. It also leads to warmer air rising from the water, increasing the chances of clouds and rain. The jet stream then pushes those rain clouds across the country to various places, including the Southeast, while other regions may experience more drought.

The same weather pattern brought over 30 atmospheric rivers to California in 2023, including the first tropical storm to hit Los Angeles since 1939. That wasn’t expected, but it happened, potentially baffling people who are used to California being in perpetual drought.

The apparent contradictions in how our weather works drive home the complexities of explaining the difference between what we see in the news, what is predicated, and what we experience.

“It is certainly one of (the) biggest challenges, explaining the complexities of the weather and how it might not make sense or what people experience when they walk outside their front door,” added Graschel. “Unfortunately, it often takes people having to go through extreme events and stuff like that to realize it.”

Graschel said the Southeast should see more rainfall as the jet stream corrects itself as we move into December and January. In the long term, however, he said the Southeast should expect more extremes in the weather, but it’s hard to predict.

“There’s an indication that there would be more extreme events, meaning extreme floods and more droughts,” he said. “The climate models show that, but as far as being able to tell you what the weather might be in October of 2024, it would be very difficult to do that. But certainly, the climate models are showing that we should have more of these extremes coming in the future.”

The latest federal climate report

The government’s latest environmental report on climate change affirms what farmers, foresters, scientists, and vulnerable communities in the drought-hit Southeast are already experiencing and seeing; the region should expect more drought, flooding, and extreme weather in the coming decades and beyond.

“Some of the groups that will be particularly affected by all of the changes that we’re seeing as the climate continues to change—including extreme weather events, and flooding, droughts, wildfires, tornadoes, all those pieces—are communities that are at the front line of all of those various hazards as they increase in intensity and frequency,” said Lesley-Ann L. Dupigny-Giroux, professor at the University of Vermont and the Vermont state climatologist who wrote chapter five of the National Climate Assessment.

One of the latest advancements in climate science, which features significantly in the new report, is called “attribution science,” which allows scientists to conclusively show that climate change makes weather events, such as droughts, hurricanes and wildfires, far more extreme.

For example, greater levels of greenhouse gasses prevent heat from escaping the atmosphere. The ocean absorbs the heat instead, which can create more frequent, stronger and unpredictable hurricanes. Hurricane Otis, which hit the west coast of Mexico in late October, went from a tropical storm to a category five hurricane in under 12 hours, giving people less time to plan and evacuate.

Hurricane Idalia, which hit Florida’s Big Bend region in late August, also rapidly intensified, going from a tropical storm to a category three hurricane in about 24 hours. Both hurricanes broke records for the speed at which they intensified.

In addition, drought caused by warmer temperatures can dry out farmland and forests, meaning the likelihood and volatility of forest fires increases significantly. And once the ground becomes very dry, it loses the ability to absorb water, creating what is known as hydrophobic soil. So when rain does come, it can cause severe flash flooding.

”I’ve been fighting wildfires every day since August 21,” said Strain, the Louisiana commissioner. “It’s not a joke, and we all need to come together to do something about this crisis before it’s too late.”