sadly too numerous to name. Today the number of Illinois counties designated as drought disaster areas rose to 98 of Illinois’ 102 counties. The four counties not named disaster areas (yet) were:
Cook, DuPage, Will, and my home county of Kane.
You can go look at the usda map for the whole country here. It is massive, with more than 50% of U.S. counties declared disaster areas by today.
As to why this cluster of four counties in Illinois are not included, I can only guess that, because we have been getting some rain over the last week, we are in somewhat less dire straits than the rest of the state. But we are still in drought, per the drought monitor map, which may tell a different story after it updates tomorrow morning. The still-brown grass here tells its own story.
Tags: 2012 drought, agriculture, climate change, food, global warming, Illinois, natural disasters, USDA
