Since the year 2000, droughts of increasing severity have covered more and more of the state.
To have averted deaths during droughts of such magnitude is no mean achievement.
Droughts of extraordinary intensity and length have necessitated food and water drops.
Similar numbers were affected in the droughts of 2005 and 2010.
The older ones among them remember the droughts of the past.
On the background of global warming, the repeated nature of droughts of different types was identified.
"The big floods and droughts of the last 20 years have been in that area," he added.
Tree cover in southern Niger, for example, has increased tenfold since the devastating droughts of the 1970s.
The Sierras of modern-day California experienced the severest droughts of the past 4,000 to 7,000 years.
More European heat waves like 2003 or 2010; more Midwest United States droughts of 2011 and 2012.
Oddly, some of the core hitters in the Yankees' lineup have gone through droughts of one type or another.
