Drought watch

A couple of days of rain does not a drought defeat.

Mormon Crickets—which are actually katydids, not crickets—are appearing around the state for the first time in several years, fostered by the drought. The same with bark beetles, and damage from such insects is a risk in some of the state's most beautiful places, like Lamoille Canyon and Jarbidge.

The white band on the wall that surrounds Lake Mead, reflecting its falling level, is now 130 feet tall. The lake is at its lowest level since it was created by the construction of Hoover Dam. A NASA water scientist, Jay Famiglietti, told California's Desert Sun that the problem goes beyond the drought—that the Colorado River Basin has lost enormous amounts of groundwater—but that the drought is certainly a factor.

The impact of the drought on Nevada is getting wide attention, mostly recently in an Al Jazeera piece on a new milk processing plant in Churchill County that is troubled because of the length of the drought.