NASA maps show dire drought conditions in Texas

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NASA/National Drought Mitigation Center

A newly released map from NASA shows serious drought conditions in Texas.

Imaging maps released this week by NASA show that water levels in Texas are reaching dangerously low levels not seen in the past 60 years.

The extent of the drought of 2011 that has spawned wildfires, killed off agricultural crops and forced ranchers to sell cattle to out-of-state buyers can be seen on the new maps created by NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md.

The maps are based on data from NASA’s pair of gravity recovery and climate experiment satellites that detect changes in Earth’s gravity field caused by redistribution of water on the land surface. That information is then combined with other meterological databases dating back to 1948 to create the maps.

The level of dryness in the latest maps released this week show that, particularly in the eastern and southern portion of Texas, the current level of dryness has occurred less than two percent of the time in the past 63 years.

The San Angelo Standard-Times reports that the Texas Water Development Board is looking to finalize its next five-year water plan at a Dec. 15 meeting in order to present it to Gov. Rick Perry and the Legislature in January.

Read more in the Houston Business Journal.