You know this Kansas drought you’ve heard about?

It’s history.

It’ll be pouring outside by the time these words reach you.

In sheets, in buckets. A gully washer, a toad strangler.

I know this is so because droughts and stock market corrections don’t exist to impoverish farmers and investors.

They exist to embarrass journalists who write gloom-and-doom stories about them. The last time I wrote about a drought, down came the rain, drowning out my commentary.

So I’m going to write about this drought and put a stop to it.

Because it’s serious.

Guy name of John Lomas e-mails me the other day. He’s a research analyst over at the Kansas Applied Remote Sensing program, KARS for short. It’s a Kansas University research program.

Researchers usually don’t buttonhole me with their latest discoveries. They prefer to lurk.

So Lomas’ e-mail got my attention.

He’s been looking at maps made by KARS. The maps are part of a product called the GreenReport.

These maps can tell you how green and lush  or brown and dry  the state looks one week of one year compared with the same week of another year.

Well, this year the “GreenReport” is the wrong name for the product.

“BrownReport” would be more accurate.

The maps showed that in the last week of March, a whole bunch of the southern half of Kansas that’s west of Wichita was much less green than usual.

National Weather Service maps, meanwhile, show that since last October, the vast majority of the very same area has had one-quarter or less of the moisture it normally receives.

Lomas has compared the late March 2002 map with the late March 1996 map. They look alike and, Lomas notes, winter wheat yields that year were only 50 percent of normal.

We’re talking about a potentially huge impact on the economic health of Kansas farmers, which ultimately affects everybody’s pocketbook.

So like I said, it’s time to put the brakes on this drought.

Kelley Kindscher’s my secret weapon. He’s an associate scientist with the Kansas Biological Survey. It was Kindscher I interviewed the last time I wrote about a Kansas drought  bringing down the cats and dogs.

Back then, Kindscher told me that crabgrass and purple-flowered henbit, which had been elbowing their way into my herb garden, would make out like bandits during a drought. So would something called cheatgrass. With a name like that, doesn’t it just figure?

This time Kindscher talked about John Weaver, who studied drought in Nebraska during the Dust Bowl.

Kindscher said native species with shallow root systems would be the first to die in a multiyear drought. Prickley pear cactus would pop up in western Kansas. Shortgrass prairie would likely march from western Kansas into eastern Kansas.

But, Kindscher added, we can still have a normal winter wheat crop in most places if we just get some rain. Lomas agreed.

It’s got to come soon, though. Like yesterday, maybe.

Well, I’m doing my part. I’ve told you how bad the drought is and what happens if it continues.

C’mon, Mr. Weather, make a fool out of me.

Show me what you got.

Or do I have to dance, too?

 Roger Martin is a research writer and editor for the Kansas University Center for Research and editor of Explore, KU’s research magazine Web site, which can be found at www.research.ku.edu. Martin’s e-mail address is rmartin@kucr.ku.edu.