America’s Drought-Riskiest Cities

A new list from livability expert Bert Sperling measures the drought severity for the 100 largest metro areas in the United States. Nearly 200 million people reside in these 100 metros, comprising nearly 60% of the U.S. population.

SoCal the driest, Texas the wettest

Los Angeles tops the list of drought-plagued cities, with its recent annual rainfall only 25% of normal. Other top-ten driest cities include
Salt Lake City, Nashville, and Birmingham.

At the other end of the list are cities suffering from too much water. Cities in the central Texas region such as San Antonio, Dallas, Houston,
and Oklahoma City have been afflicted by flood conditions this summer. Ironically, these floods which have caused deaths and property damage in Texas are the product of abnormal climate patterns that prevented the moisture-laden clouds to be carried northward to the already-parched Deep South.

Top cities in various categories can be found either in the news release or via the new DroughtScore.com database.

See Also: Methodology

Source: Sperling’s Best Places

This entry was posted on Saturday, November 10th, 2007 and is filed under Lists and Rankings, Museums & Online Exhibits, Resources for Educators, Science, Source File. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.