Praying for Rain 2011

I live in New Mexico, where in a good year we will get 7-8 inches of rain, and in a bad year, under an inch. We've had a number of bad years now. We are in a moderate to severe drought cycle. The drought is sneaky. It seems not so bad on the surface: day after day of sunshine, no weeds to pull in the spring, and a winter that is mild and pleasant. You keep watering your lawn, doing your laundry and washing your car as usual. But at some point you realize that while the rest of the country is experiencing terrible tornadoes, rain that never stops, and snow that shuts cities down for days, our extreme weather is drought. It's not as dramatic, until we have a forest fire that burns for weeks, but the consequences are just as damaging. Worse in some ways because it's so stealthy, tip toing around, pretending to be innocent, but actually causing great harm to all that need water to survive.