Maybe it's not a drought. Maybe the recent weather pattern in the Southwest is normal.

In that case, oooops! All the fools out there building golf courses made a big, big mistake.

"The Colorado River Basin is more prone to drought than had been thought, a panel of experts reported yesterday, and as the climate warms and the population in the region grows, pressure on water supplies will become greater." LINK

And that is seriously bad news for the millions of people who have moved out to the Las Vegas area. Now, I'm seriously tempted to just let loose and rip on people who move somewhere so obviously unsuited to habitation- somewhere where you need air conditioning to live, somewhere that cannot sustain unirrigated agriculture (the rule of thumb is 21" of rain a year). But then I think of all the articles I've read about the people who have moved out there or bought homes out there and they're (obviously) not ok people. It's a place for second chances, it's a place where people who have no where else to try because somehow they managed to screw up living in Florida or something. They're ill educated and socioeconomically marginalized, so it would be totally cruel to point out that they've just moved from the frying pan of their previous messed up life to the fire of living in what seems likely to become America's biggest folly- a false mirage in the desert. Who the hell moves to Las Vegas. Jesus.

Well, apparently a lot of people move to freaking Las Vegas. "Nevada's Clark County, which includes Las Vegas, saw water use double from 1985 to 2000."

"The 25 million Americans who rely on the Colorado River for water should expect continued — and even worsening — drought spells and water shortages as rising temperatures and growing populations create a double whammy, experts warned in a new report." LINK