Quote:
Originally Posted by Targan
Of all the things in HW to find unrealistic, why the drought? Climate science is an incredibly complicated field. A post-nuclear war drought in North America that lasts 3 to 5 years is entirely plausible IMO.
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A few things that bothered me.
- HW presents the higherups KNOWING that the drought is going to be long and cover nearly the entire continent. As you have stated climate science is incredibly complicated, yet without accurate data this fact is known before it happens.
- The prevailing patterns of west to east that dominates the US weather pattern is driven by the earths rotation and air flow between the poles and the tropics and is not likely to change unless the earth changes direction or the poles become warmer than the tropics.
- Even when parts of the nation are suffering from a drought, the moisture from the Pacific Ocean needs to go somewhere. Currently you are seeing the driest conditions ever in California yet the Midwest is having near record record rain.
This is borne out in the chart below. Which graphs average precipitation across the lower 48 states over the last 120 years.
Notice that the low is 25.01 inches and the high is 34.96 inches. This is not a huge variation (it is under 17% from the average) when you look at the nation as an entirety and consider that this is over 120 years of history.
It would have been much more likely for a surprise drought to have effected the Midwest for 3-6 months during the peak growing season. That probably would have had the most devastating effect without saying the entire country is having one. The months of May-July in 1934 would probably have been the best example of this. Which were some of the driest months ever nationally. But even being the driest the US as a whole has ever seen they still had nearly 65% of its average rain for those months.