Montana in grip of 4th driest year on record: Big Sky Country farmers, ranchers and towns struggle under extreme drought

Strange Sounds – December 22, 2021

There’s an old weather adage that’s been passed over cups of coffee and glasses of beer for nearly a century: “It’s not a drought ’til it breaks your heart.”

Today, the hearts of thousands of Montanans have broken across the bare back of one of one of the worst droughts in Montana history: farmers trying to balance their books after a paltry harvest, stockmen paying too much to feed already skinny cattle, outfitters and fishermen prevented from landing a fish because the streams were either too warm or too dry, conservationists and recreationists of all types who watched Montana’s forests burn and its prairies shrivel.

On Dec. 15, 2021, every county in Montana was identified as experiencing some level of drought, with a third of the state is in the grips of a “D4” or “exceptional” drought, a designation the U.S. Department of Agriculture expects to occur in any one location just once every 50 to 100 years. The entire state is, on average, 4.66 inches behind in annual precipitation. The only years that have been drier were 1931, 1919 and 1952.

There have been longer droughts, both in the first half of the 1930s and again in the early 2000s, and isolated portions of Montana have withered under more extreme stretches of heat and dryness for limited periods of time, but according to the National Centers for Environmental Information (NCEI) in only three of the past 127 years have Montanans as a whole endured such bone dry conditions.

https://strangesounds.org

State steps in when feds give Title X money to abortionists

Bob Unruh – May 13, 2021

President Trump successfully had worked to make sure federal Title X taxpayer money was not being used to fund abortions.

Joe Biden, when he moved into the Oval Office, immediately reversed that. It’s one of nearly a dozen ways President Biden is moving to cement a “legacy of death,” as critics have described

But now one state has started a movement to protect its own taxpayers from that burden anyway.

Montana Gov. Greg Gianforte on Thursday signed his state Legislature’s HB620, sponsored by Rep. Amy Regier, that ensures taxpayer dollars funding Title X family planning programs are kept separate from abortion-related activities.

“Taxpayers shouldn’t be forced to subsidize the dangerous work of abortionists. HB 620 helps ensure that Montana women and families maintain access to quality, comprehensive healthcare, including family planning services,” said Denise Burke, a senior counsel to the Alliance Defending Freedom.

https://www.wnd.com