Why introduce this? No one else is suggesting the levels could be here forever.
> The Mississippi has always ebbed and flowed.
If your inference is that these historic drought levels are a regular occurrence, you may want to reconsider what historic means.
> A few years ago it was threating to top the levees.
Is your point here that extremes cancel each other out? How is that logical?
"Is drying up" is way different than "levels are low". Drying up is as permanent as something can get.
Until it gets wet again, right? Both droughts and floods can have disastrous consequences. They're always news. If you're upset because you're seeing increasingly frequent reports of increasingly drastic weather extremes, it might be because the frequency and extremity of weather events are increasing. And even if we knew this was going to be happening for several decades, the fact that it's happening today, and the impacts of those events, are news.
The money dried up
the aquifer dried up
the relationship dried up
the oil dried up....
People use 'levels are low' or something similar for temporary conditions.
I'm not really going to debate this anymore.