The American West has been suffering a consistent drought for much of the last decade. This map shows that while it has much improved from this time last year, it's still very bad in some places, like North Texas. And in the decades before that, farmers had already been notorious for pumping out the fossil water in the Ogallala Aquifer at unsustainable rates.
Now the USGS has put together a very snazzy simulation showing just how this has happened, by measuring the water table year by year and calculating how much it has dropped. More northerly states like Nebraska seem to be doing fairly well, but North Texas in particular doesn't look good. Check it out below. --Ryan Cooper
The Week
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