With winter approaching, the weather in Afghanistan has become more and more an issue. For the people of Afghanistan, however, the weather has been big news for several years because the country is in the midst of one of its worst droughts in a century.

Much of Afghanistan is very dry anyway by our standards, averaging between 6 and 12 inches of liquid precipitation annually. Here in the States, that's comparable to the climate of much of Nevada or New Mexico, while Wilmington averages more than 40 inches of rain and melted snow per year.

It's actually hard to gauge the recent climate in Afghanistan, because no official weather observations have been received from there in several years, but researchers do have data from surrounding countries. By extrapolating that data, they estimate that over the last three years, less than half its average precipitation has fallen in Afghanistan - in numbers, that means only about ten to 15 liquid inches total in three years. For comparison, the driest year in our region still yielded about 30 inches.