Anderson Mill marina at Lake Travis where the water is forty feet lower than it should be due to a long drought. That’s the lowest the lake-reservoir has been since 1964. The marina is half its normal size because half the boats and their docks have been moved into deeper water closer to the main basin. All that brown land and white rock on the left and brown vegetation and white rock in the foreground normally is underwater. Meanwhile, the drought gets more savage by the week, despite the El Nino that’s supposed to bring us beaucoup rain this winter. Hasn’t yet, although an inch or so is predicted with the passage of a cold front tonight.
THE TEXAS SCRIBBLER 
Beside El Nino, there is also an 11 years cycle of solar activity. I do not recall the name, but its peak (expressed in quantity of rainfall) was about 3 years ago, and now it is all downhill.
Although – I see there are some news on this:
http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2002/18jan_solarback.htm
Hmm. You sound like a believer in the Old Farmer’s Alamanc, whose predictions rely on some secret analysis of sunspot cycles. As far as I know, meteorologists believe the cycle has some effect on the weather, but they don’t know what it is. I certainly hope we don’t have eight more years (!) before we get out of this drought. Usually we get real dry like this and then the storms gather in the west, and we get a frog-strangler of a rain, flashflooding, etc., and bingo we’re out of it.