When I began my professional career at the University of Nebraska–Lincoln in 1979, I intended to direct my research and outreach program at the emerging field of climate impact science. It was fortuitous that a large portion of the United States, including the Great Plains, Upper Midwest, and Pacific Northwest, had recently come out of an intense but somewhat short-lived drought during 1976-1977. This drought spawned a research-oriented workshop held at the University of Nebraska in 1979 that focused on drought impacts and the development of agricultural drought strategies for that area and similar regions