Reading the tree rings from Montana to northern Mexico, from Pacific beaches to the Colorado Rockies, a team of scientists led by a UCLA researcher has shown that the current long-term drought in the West is the most severe in 1,200 years.

It’s not just a dry spell — it’s a megadrought.

The rigorous study, aided by NASA, shows all that talk you have heard most of your life, about how the lack of rain in these parts is normal, and about how “we live in a desert anyway” — we don’t; we live in a rare Mediterranean climate — is nonsense.