“Behold, I am against thee, O thou most proud, sayest the Lord God of hosts: for thy day is come, the time that I will visit thee.” Jeremiah 50:31
America is convulsing with weather extremes. In Western states mega-drought conditions and mega-fires destroyed thousands of acres of land, homes and upended lives. Where the drought subsided, rains increased. But the welcomed relief masqueraded petrifying floods converting streets into rivers, producing destruction and death.
Dallas-Fort Worth was slammed with what meteorologists described as a “one-in-a-thousand-years” event after more than 10 inches of rain dropped on the area in less than 24 hours on August 22. Some locations were inundated with up to 15 inches of rain. By presstime a 60-year-old woman succumbed when her vehicle was swept up in deep moving waters, reported media outlets. Emergency crews responded to hundreds of high-water related calls, including rescues and flooded cars and homes. Climatologists called the pattern “unusual” and record breaking, but not unique.
“It’s very unusual, but I wouldn’t actually call it unprecedented,” John Nielson-Gammon, a Texas A&M climatology professor told The Final Call.
›He said the drought was “unusually rapid” but by comparison, 2011 was just as hot and drier. While this was the biggest rain event ever to hit Dallas, we’ve seen bigger rainfall totals elsewhere, he explained. Days earlier, rains broke a 51-day dry spell in the capital city of Austin, where the land was so dry, it was cracking.
“We went 51 days without rain. That’s amazing when you say that water is 75 percent of the body … but it’s more than that percentage when it comes to everything that we do here, jobs and so on,” said Christina Muhammad, a first responder and CERT (Community Emergency Response Team) member with the 10,000 Fearless First Responders. She is based in Texas.
Nationally, weather, water and climate events cause on average 650 deaths, and $15 billion in damage per year and accounts for 90 percent of all presidentially declared disasters, says the National Weather Service. About one-third of the U.S. economy—some $3 trillion—is vulnerable to weather and climate. America is being battered and forecasters warn the worst is yet to come.
Water drying up
Mitigating these weather events means being prepared for things that used to be considered less likely to happen but are becoming more common. As America is being curtailed from coast to coast, federal and state governments are not entirely equipped to answer nature’s fury.
Generally, states like Texas are good at doing the math with well-established ways of assessing risk, designing building codes, and avoiding floodplains, said Mr. Nielson-Gammon; assuming the climate doesn’t change.
“But with the climate changing, with respect to heavy rainfall for example, the numbers generally haven’t caught up to what the climate has already done, let alone what it will do in the future,” Mr. Nielson-Gammon explained.
For parched ridden lands, new rounds of rain aren’t expected to reverse the devastation left by severe drought, which still poses a formidable threat of catastrophic proportions if unmitigated. The hard-hit Colorado River Basin which several states and Mexico rely on for water needs is experiencing its worst drought in recorded history. Drought impacts water availability and agricultural production and increases wildfire risk.
The basin is critical to $1.4 trillion in annual revenue from agriculture and other commerce.
Original Indigenous tribes depend on the basin as an economic and cultural resource as do 40 million others spanning Arizona, California, Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico, Utah, Wyoming, and neighboring Mexico.
“Every sector in every state has a responsibility to ensure that water is used with maximum efficiency,” said Tanya Trujillo, assistant secretary for Water and Science at the Department of Interior.
“In order to avoid a catastrophic collapse of the Colorado River System and a future of uncertainty and conflict, water use in the basin must be reduced,” she said August 16, in a statement.
Contentious water negotiations addressing the crisis broke down between affected states ending with the federal government imposing conservation measures for water use on all but California. In June, the Interior Department gave the states 60 days to draw up a new and reduced water allocation plan. The area has suffered the pangs of a 23-year drought as dry as any in the last 1,200 years, experts say.
Why are calamities in America?
While meteorologists, climatologists and environmental observers point the finger at climate change, there is prophesied and divine reason these weather disasters are impacting nations around the world and particularly the U.S.
It’s the unraveling of America as a great and powerful nation, but a wicked one, declared the Most Honorable Elijah Muhammad, Eternal Leader of the Nation of Islam and his foremost student, the Honorable Minister Louis Farrakhan. For nine respective decades, both men warned America about what the calamities plaguing her meant.
The scriptures state the shock of the hour is a grievous thing. It’s the consequence of ignoring right guidance after repeated warnings from prophets, messengers, and warners about impending doom for ignoring calls to repentance for a history of exploitation, oppression and slavery of Black and Indigenous Native Americans.
In his illuminous book, “The Fall of America,” the Hon. Elijah Muhammad wrote, it is the presence of God to answer the cry of justice, make Himself known, and “conquer our captors” by using “weapons against which they have no power, the forces of nature.”
“He (Allah) will bring attacks of divine judgement of their world without the use of contrived weapons. The weapons of war used by God in the past history of the destruction of the enemies of God—such as Noah’s people, Lot’s people, and Moses’ people—are an example of what he will use today,” wrote the Hon. Elijah Muhammad.
“The weapons are the forces of nature against which we have no defense. America is under such divine attack now, in storms as rain, hail and earthquakes—(the latter is yet to take place). A terrific drought is on its way, too against America,” he wrote.
He said this is the divine judgment to bring vicious America to her knees. America’s fall has been in motion for a while. The ferocity of fires, floods, and drought demonstrates an acceleration of the fall that cannot be overlooked.
The prophesied plagues in America for her iniquity, arrogance and recalcitrance are now being witnessed in real time. Minister Farrakhan has repeatedly warned, “watch the weather” as confirmation America is in the throes of God’s wrath. He has also stressed, like his teacher, the importance of preparing spiritually, mentally and physically for what is to come.
Preparation and heeding guidance
Along with warning by Allah’s (God’s) servants is also guidance on surviving and preparing for these troubling times.
“The Honorable Elijah Muhammad warned us about this decades ago,” said Nation of Islam Student Minister Daniel Muhammad, during an August 21 webcast from Mosque Maryam in Chicago. “Every last one of us should have at least 90 days of nonperishable foods stored up in our houses,” he said, discussing the calamities.
The Nation of Islam student minister exhorted those in the audience and viewing the program via internet to prepare foods for canning and storage during this time of disaster and famine, which was also prophesied to occur.
“Be wise about where you secure them because in the event of a natural disaster, we still want to have these options … when times get rough,” said Daniel Muhammad. “Elijah Muhammad said during that time, things will get so rough that people will barely be able to walk the streets,” he added.
He added that if people don’t prepare and sit on the guidance that the Hon. Elijah Muhammad and Minister Farrakhan have given, “we will find ourselves in the shuffle and the scuffle with everybody else,” fighting over sparce grocery shelves.
Beyond the “survival kits” and storage of food is also the mental and emotional dynamic to get through the times.
“Just being righteous as believers … we’re going to feel it. We’re feeling everything that this world is feeling,” added Christina Muhammad. “We’re steps ahead because of what the Honorable Minister Louis Farrakhan has taught us … to be prepared,” she added.
As a regular presenter on survival, disaster preparedness and as a first-responder, Christina Muhammad explained the importance of acquiring land and taking control of your own food chain, despite the conditions befalling America.
“If we have land, it is the time right now, to put food in the ground,” she said. “That’s how the believers will be able to move forward. If we keep the faith … in Almighty God Allah,” who controls the conditions, she said.
Persistent drought is hammering commercial farmers and ranchers in Western, Central and Southern Plains states, with far-reaching implications, not only against their profits, but food availability and affordability for everyday folks. A June survey of the Texas Farm Bureau said in 15 states, including Texas, commercial farmers expect crop yields to drop 68 percent from usual production, and ranchers expect herd sizes to be 50 percent less.
The American Farm Bureau Federation, an advocacy group said the impact is bad across the board. “The effects of this drought will be felt for years to come, not just by farmers and ranchers but also by consumers,” federation president Zippy Duvall said in a statement.
Farmers had to make hard decisions to sell off livestock they spent years raising or destroying orchard trees they grew for decades, he said.
Carl Muhammad, a soil conservation technician in South Carolina, sees the impact on farmers firsthand. Drought is wreaking havoc, he said, citing losses in corn and cotton crops—both are top 10 revenue earners for the state.
“Farmers without irrigation, most of them corn croppers, are almost burned up for lack of rain,” said Carl Muhammad. The critical time corn needs rain is when it is growing out ears, he said.
“If it doesn’t get rain—at least two or three inches of rain … every day—the ears can’t come in, and basically the corn crop is destroyed,” he said.
Carl Muhammad said cotton doesn’t fare better. Cotton farmers are also at a loss with the drought and experience a double dose of destruction when the rain does come.
“If it waits too long, and it rains too hard, then the cotton fruits fall off … those are the cotton balls,” he said, adding, “farmers are still at a loss.”
Carl Muhammad estimates 60 to 70 percent of crops are lost due to drought among those without irrigation, and only those with irrigated crops are doing okay, but measurably. “Irrigation can only go so far,” he observed. In some cases, irrigation may only reach 80 to 90 acres with the remaining 10 acres drought burned on the same land—spelling trouble either way. The unirrigated sections are in the same condition as farms without any irrigation.
As state and federal government try to manage water shortages produced by drought with water restrictions like in the Colorado Basin, rationing “magnifies” the problem for farmers. “In that case, those who have irrigation, but can’t access the water are basically in the same position as ones who don’t have irrigation,” said Carl Muhammad.
What he is witnessing on South Carolina farmlands is “just horrifying” for farmers, he told The Final Call.
While environmental experts describe the weather events as effects of “climate change,” Carl Muhammad, who is also the local student minister for the Nation of Islam in Columbia, S.C., also sees what is happening as divine chastisement on America.
“America will continue to suffer as long as she continues to mistreat the Black man and woman and not heed the warnings of the Honorable Elijah Muhammad and Minister Louis Farrakhan,” he said.
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