But the year following brought unforeseen events ten million refugees, a war followed by acute drought.
"It's still lingering in a few areas, but there aren't any places right now feeling acute drought".
Without access to the data and tools necessary to prevent acute drought impacts in the state's most vulnerable communities, however, the intensified drought will cost the state and local residents far more this coming summer.
More than 240,000 people do not have enough food in Somaliland because of this acute drought caused by poor Gu rains (the region's main rainy season) from April to June this year, and in 2014.
Othman said Iraq's environmental degradation is being intensified by an acute drought and water shortage across the country that has seen a 70% decrease in the volume of water flowing through the Euphrates and Tigris rivers.
After three years of acute drought there are no reserves, and stocks that the World Food Programme have in place cannot be distributed because there are no staff and all private transport has been requisitioned to carry refugees.
The acute drought of 1976 1977 was short, with very low precipitation, 51% below normal, but only slightly warmer than the long term average.
This was not the case in the 30s, where it took 4 years, 1935, 1936, 1937, and 1938, where there were 20, 17, 11, and 26 storms, respectively, to effectively recover from a longer but less acute drought.
The longer term depletion of soil water and the shallow unsaturated zone in the watershed has a much more pervasive impact on the Lake Mendocino reservoir than the shorter acute drought.
Following the recent 2012 2016 drought that many consider the worst drought in California's history, with the acute drought of 1976/1977, both reservoirs, large and small, were either emptied or nearly so, and in the next year following the drought, 1978, both reservoirs recovered.
