Almost a third of the entire Southeast is smack dab in the middle of of the National Weather Service's worst drought category—"exceptional"

Apocalypse Now: The Drought | Submitted by Rick Perlstein on November 7, 2007 - 8:09pm.

The month of October saw America wracked by two Biblical-sized calamities: wildfire in California, and drought in the Southeast. Both indict the conservatives' vision of government. Let us first speak of the drought.

Three million Atlanta-area residents get their water from 38,000-acre Lake Lanier. It's three months away from depletion—and that booming metropolis has no backup plan on file for that eventuality. UPS is testing out urinals that don't use water. Coca-Cola's international headquarters has turned off their decorative fountain. Georgia Tech's greening the grass in its football stadium with spray paint, and the city aquarium has shut off its waterfall.

But the problem hardly ends with one municipality's planning failures and these colorful consequences. Almost a third of the entire Southeast is smack dab in the middle of of the National Weather Service's worst drought category—"exceptional": most of Tennessee and Alabama; the northern half of Georgia; parts of the Carolinas, Kentucky, Virginia. As the AP reports, Georgia Governor Sonny Perdue "asked a Florida federal judge to force the Army Corps of Engineers to curb the amount of water draining from Georgia reservoirs into Alabama."

And Alabama has to be thrilled with that. ...