June Weber is a Hurricane Katrina survivor who relocated to the small mountain town of Monteagle, Tennessee. Two years later her adopted home has been hit by drought, and she finds herself speaking heretical words: “I don't wish anyone ill, but what we really need is to have a hurricane come up here from the Gulf and sit on us.”

The drought that has been spreading for months across the south-eastern US is so severe that even a hurricane blasting through the region would be unlikely to break it, climatologists say.