If they water horses one day, they put off washing dishes or doing a load of laundry until the next day. Other states in the Corn Belt are seeing pretty much the same thing. The dry spell has been compounded by unusually warm weather, which has sucked moisture from the soil. Temperatures in Iowa over the past nine months have shown the biggest shift in 105 years from what is considered normal. Large portions of Texas, Florida and Georgia are also going through a severe drought.
Some environmentalists blame global warming.
Climatologists cite La Nina, a cooling of the eastern Pacific Ocean around the equator. La Nina tends to bring dry, hot summers to the Midwest. In fact, the last severe drought in the Midwest, in 1988-89, also occurred during a La Nina.