New York Times
By KIM SEVERSON and KIRK JOHNSON

Drought Spreads Its Pain Across 14 States


Terry Pickle climbs out of the hole in Colquitt, Ga., that was once the spot on Spring Creek where river baptisms were held. Drought conditions have reduced the creek to a series of puddles.

COLQUITT, Ga. — The heat and the drought are so bad in this southwest corner of Georgia that hogs can barely eat. Corn, a lucrative crop with a notorious thirst, is burning up in fields. Cotton plants are too weak to punch through soil so dry it might as well be pavement.

Farmers with the money and equipment to irrigate are running wells dry in the unseasonably early and particularly brutal national drought that some say could rival the Dust Bowl days.

“It’s horrible so far,â€