Because drought is to dry and hot plants cannot survive without water and animals cannot survive without plants, water and other living creatures. So drought has a great effect on the food chain. If drought is really long, measures are taken to help save the water. When a drought is that bad drastic measures such as never washing your car or only having one shower per day are not much fun and can sometimes lead to uncleanly environments which can cause bacterial related diseases and infections. Elderly people have trouble with living in very hot and dry environments. They have trouble trying to stay cool and not many elderly fold drink a lot of fluids. So drought has its own effect on everyone. Drought causes the land to be unhealthy as well. It can dry it out so much that large cracks in the earth's crust and because no plants live within the dry climate it means that the soil is not able to be held together by plant roots. This is the effect that causes wind erosion.
Meteorologists determine the onset and the end of a drought by carefully monitoring meteorological and hydrological variables such as precipitation patterns, soil moisture, and stream flow. To do this, meteorologists make use of various indices that show deficits in precipitation over periods of time.