Back when I lived in the old Racist Republic, I remember reading a newspaper story of a family who lived on a farm in one of the more arid areas of the country. One day, the farmer’s twin boys (aged 7) ran excitedly into the house and told their mother that the sky had “broken”. When she went outside, she saw that it was raining. The boys had never seen rain before.
In places like that, a seven-year drought is admittedly extreme, but it’s certainly not unknown.
In more temperate climes, though, a six-month drought can be seen as catastrophic:
Europe on course to suffer worst drought in 500 YEARS
You can ignore pretty much all the copy in the above link, because it’s the same old dreary “climate change is going to kill us all” bullshit. But the pictures are breathtaking, e.g. this one in Holland:
…where “riverboats” have become “mudboats”.
Elsewhere, you have stories like this one, where one foresighted guy has stored many thousands of gallons of rainwater in underground tanks to keep his garden going.
If I were him, though, I would have kept shtum about it because this being Britishland, I wouldn’t put it past the local council to force him to pump it all out and “share” it with his neighbors.
Sic semper potentas.
All that said, however, the European heat wave has had some benefits: