National Geographic: Last summer Nevada was so dry that rancher Darryl Brady grabbed a shovel and hacked into a dusty pit, once a lush spring that gurgled onto fields thick with wild hay. The snows hadn't come to the mountains and the river was dry, so Brady was desperately trying to tap into the earth's watery veins to save his herd of about 85 cattle. But it was a failure; the earth had no water to give.
"I remember when I was a kid it would rain and we used to have puddles out here," Brady said wistfully. "These...