The higher temperatures in the West have led to a dwindling snowpack. This has meant that the forests have become drier and so more susceptible to fires. The drought and now fires have spread from Alaska, who moved its famous Iditarod race due to a lack of snow, through Washington and to southern California.

In the conifer forests of the western United States, earlier snow melts, longer summers and an increase in spring and summer temperatures have increased fire frequency by 400 percent and have increased the amount of land burned by 650 percent since 1970.

Active fires have burnt three times as many acres in Washington state as in California. Fires over 100,000 acres are considered a “megafire” and before 1995 there was only 1 per year in California. This year California has had 5 “megafires.” Reports said more than 5,000 fires had burned six million acres already, and there have been several fatalities.

Washington Record Fires

Tens of thousands of jobs and billions of dollars have already evaporated. And with no end in sight, there may still be years of suffering — and painful decisions — waiting ahead.
The U.S. Forest Service spent around $200 million a week battling wildfires across the country during the summer of 2015, breaking all-time records, according to Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack. Oregon and Washington were among the hardest hit states, with hundreds of thousands of acres scorched.

Several Western states — California, Montana and Idaho — are also seeing a severe fire season with some 11,600 square miles scorched so far. Authorities have warned that smoke from these fires is creating hazardous air quality and that the choking haze could soon spread north into Canada.
About 1,250 firefighters were battling the fires, which were just 10% contained and threatened over 5,000 homes. The firefighters included about 700 Washington National Guardsmen.

Crews also arrived from New Zealand and Australia, as areas of central and eastern Washington battled 16 large wildfires covering more than 920 square miles.

We should not be ignorant of the ways in which God works. God often withholds rains upon a people who continue to sin against Him. Is the prolonged lack of rain in California just blind coincidence or is God angry with us as a people?

Drought—followed by famine—is one of the consequences for national disobedience. Our national sins do not go unnoticed by God. God makes this clear to Solomon and the same applies today since God has not changed (Malachi 3:6).

Then the LORD appeared to Solomon by night, and said to him: “I have heard your prayer, and have chosen this place for Myself as a house of sacrifice. When I shut up heaven and there is no rain, or command the locusts to devour the land, or send pestilence among My people, if My people who are called by My name will humble themselves, and pray and seek My face, and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin and heal their land (2 Chronicles 7:12-13).

I wonder if we as a nation will seek His face….and more importantly will we turn from our wicked ways.
 

There will be wars, famines and earthquakes. But all these things are merely the beginning of birth pangs.” (Matt. 24:4-8) Does famine affect earthquakes? Is there a relationship between Earthquakes and Drought?

Half of the United States is experiencing drought, according to the latest numbers from the U.S. National Drought Monitor. The drought is deepest in California and the Texas and Oklahoma panhandles, according to the latest drought map, released May 8.

Today, for the first time this century, the entire state of California is in a severe drought — or worse. The drought in California, the largest US agricultural producer, has exacerbated wild fires burning in the southern part of the state and might force some farmers to abandoned fields as lack of water makes it impossible to grow crops.

The three worst levels of drought are severe, extreme and exceptional: 100% of California is now in one of those three categories: (23.31% severe, 51.92.% extreme and 24.77% exceptional.) The most comparable recent drought was the drought of 1976-77. But the impacts today are more intense because the state’s population has doubled since then while the state’s water supply has remained fixed. The only other California drought similar to todays was during the 1920s. But the state’s population then was 1/10th of what it is now.

Through the first four months of 2014, California and Arizona have experienced the hottest start to any year in records going back to 1895.

As if the drought couldn’t get any worse, geologists now think that changes in groundwater could be destabilizing the infamous San Andreas Fault. The new research presents “a grand unified theory of California problems: water and drought lead to earthquake risk.”   The study published this week in Nature started with asking why the Sierra Nevada’s and Coastal Ranges have risen by 1 to 3 millimeters every year.

University of Nevada, Reno Research Professor Geoff Blewitt told this story in a presentation at the European Geophysical Sciences Union conference in Vienna, Austria on April 28. The annual EGU General Assembly is the largest and most prominent European geosciences event attracting over 11,000 scientists from all over the world.

Over the past 150 years, around 40 trillion gallons of groundwater in California’s Central Valley has been lost through pumping, irrigation and evapotranspiration. That’s roughly equal to all the water in Lake Tahoe, the volume of which can cover the entire state of California in 14 inches of water.

This groundwater is being increasingly depleted by agriculture in the Central Valley. The upper portion of the earth is elastic, and the ground water is weighing it down on it. Removing groundwater is like lifting that weight. The earth’s crust literally flexes up. As it moves up, it pushes up the Sierra Nevada’s and the Coastal Ranges. If the effect of groundwater depletion is big enough to move mountains, then it’s also big enough to affect the San Andreas Fault, where only friction keeps two tectonic plates from slipping. Changes in the balance of forces on these faults result in earthquakes. Long-term depletion of groundwater has led to the continued rise of the Sierra Nevada’s and it could be further destabilizing the San Andreas fault.  The current drought has made it worse.

When Oklahoma actually outpaced California in total quakes during each of the first three months in 2014, researchers said they believed injection wells used to dispose of fracking wastewater were contributing to heightened earthquake activity. To unleash natural gas, fracking requires large volumes of water, sand, and chemicals to be pumped underground. The changes in pressure led to the swarms of quakes.

Seismologists grapple with the connection between oil and gas development and earthquakes. New research being presented at the annual meeting of the Seismological Society of America showed that wastewater disposal wells—deep holes drilled to hold hundreds of millions of gallons of fluid produced by oil and gas wells—may be changing the stress on existing faults, inducing earthquakes. Those quakes can occur tens of miles away from the wells themselves and can be large as well—researchers have now linked two quakes in 2011 with a magnitude greater than 5.0 to wastewater wells.

So we pump the water out to irrigate the land or we pump water in to extract the oil – nature has reached a tipping point. Earthquakes and famine are not two unrelated ideas. Given the recent wars over oil – Wars, earthquakes and famine are all very related. New wars will be fought over dwindling resources. The Author of these words knew what He was talking about. For nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom, and in various places there will be famines and earthquakes. But all these things are merely the beginning of birth pangs.” (Matt. 24:4-8)

Mark 13 v 8 Nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom. There will be earthquakes in various places, and famines. These are the beginning of birth pains.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture has created the largest natural disaster area in U.S. history. The USDA has declared 1,016 counties in 26 U.S. states to be disaster areas. The USDA declaration basically covered about 61 percent of the entire nation. If it persists into August it could become perhaps the worst drought that America has ever seen…..and that includes the 1930’s dust-bowl. The drought is now threatening California’s drinking supply. The State Water Project, the main municipal water system, said did not have enough water to supplement the local agencies that provide water to an additional 25 million people. It is first time the project has turned off its water in its 54-year history.  The 2008-2011 California drought not end until March 2011. The drought shifted during the Summer of 2011 to affect a large portion of the Southwest and Texas. In 2013 and early 2014, the California drought returned and intensified. The year 2013 set new 150 year low precipitation records everywhere in California. In 2011 intense drought struck much of the Southwest bringing much of the region its worst drought seen since the Dust Bowl years of the 1930’s. Why is California so important?

California produces our food:
99 percent of the artichokes
44 percent of asparagus,
20 percent of cabbage
67 percent of carrots,
50 percent of bell peppers
89 percent of cauliflower
94 percent of broccoli
95 percent of celery.
90 percent of the leaf lettuce
83 percent of fresh spinach
30 percent of fresh tomatoes
95 percent of canned tomatoes.
86 percent of lemons
25 percent of oranges
90 percent of avocados
84 percent of peaches
88 percent of fresh strawberries
97 percent of fresh plums

Cornell University assistant professor of earth and atmospheric sciences Toby Ault said that the current 13-year dry spell will be of similar magnitude of the mega-droughts found in tree ring records. Data gleaned from tree rings and other sources show that the chance of a decade-long drought in the U.S. would be about 45 percent. Meanwhile the drought spreads worldwide to the countries we rely on when our crops fail. The darker areas on the map represent growing droughts.

In 2013, short-term global drought conditions intensified on all continents with little relief worldwide. In North America, the intensification was seen in the Central and Southern Plains of the U.S. and down into central Mexico. In South America, drought conditions changed little with severe drought conditions remaining in eastern Brazil and along the side of the Southern Andes. In Africa, drought intensified along the equator, especially in the eastern part of the continent and across Madagascar. In Europe, drought intensified across most of the central part of the continent. In Asia, drought continued to intensify in southern China and across Southeast Asia, as well as across southern Russia and northern Kazakhstan and Mongolia. In Australia, drought intensification occurred in many inland areas.

It is now highly likely that an El Niño event will develop by the fall of 2014, according to the Climate Prediction Center and Columbia University’s International Institute for Climate and Society. El Niño events typically develop during the spring and summer, and peak in strength during the late fall and winter. The odds now are 65% for this summer and 80% for October-Jan 2015.  El Niño events are characterized by warmer than average sea surface temperatures in the central and eastern equatorial Pacific, and they add heat to the atmosphere, thereby warming global average temperatures. El Niño events can lead to records being set for the planet’s warmest year.

Drought will lead to famine and the rising cost of food will impact all economies while killing millions by starvation. Wars have interrupted the planting of  critical crops in Sudan and death will follow as night follows day. Water resources are going to be more politically important than oil.  Mark 13 v 8 – Yeshua gave us a description of the events ahead...wars and random earthquakes and  famines. These are the beginning of birth pains.