You’re not crazy. We’re in a drought and it’s pouring rain

I was nearing the end of my trip to my parents’ house in western Massachusetts for Thanksgiving when my phone lighted up with an alert that was both familiar and shocking: “ONGOING WILDFIRE; VISIBILITY AND AIR QUALITY IN AREA DUE TO SMOKE MAY BE REDUCED.” During my childhood in rural New England, wildfires were virtually unheard of, mostly because the region receives more than 3 feet of precipitation in an average year, with autumn typically being one of the wettest periods. On Nov. 5, the U.S. Drought Monitor reported that more than 85% of the continental U.S. was experiencing “abnormally dry” conditions — the highest proportion since the organization — a partnership between the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration — began keeping records in 2000. This can lead to a dangerous feedback cycle in parts of the world where transpiration is a major source of water vapor that becomes precipitation, such as the Amazon rainforest: as drought conditions become more common, parts of the rainforest wither and die, leading to decreased transpiration, which causes less rain to fall, which kills more trees, and so on. A major reason that plants lose so much water through their leaves is that they need to open microscopic pores called stomata to absorb carbon dioxide, which is a key ingredient in photosynthesis.