Irony at its best; Island nations need water

'Drinking water rushed to 2 island nations in drought'
Thousands of people on Tuvalu and Tokelau getting outside help

Apparently these two island nations were down to their last week of fresh drinking water due to drought, and countries like the United States, Australia, and New Zealand have now sent thousands of gallons of water to these island atolls. Now these countries are not very big at all, and do not really have that many people, but a lack of rainfall on a geographically isolated atoll can have dramatic effects.

For One, neither of these countries have high numbers of desalination machines, so it's difficult for them to keep up with the high demand for water. This relates back to how disaster magnitude can be amplified due to the fact that these are very undeveloped countries. They rely much more on rainfall as a source of drinking water because they don't have the capacity to desalinize enough other water.

Secondly, such small land masses are hard pressed to get hit with copious amounts of rain as it is. Even during an extremely wet season the rain still has to fall within the confines of land for it to be usable. A drastic change in wind speed and direction because of something like La Nina can cause a severe climate change on the island. If that storm that normally hits is forced Westward by just a few miles, these islands run the risk of not reaping it's benefits.

So for now the forces of Australia and New Zealand have been able to deliver an actual desalination plant to Tuvalu, in hopes that this will allow for at minimum a short term solution to what could very well be a long term problem. Hopefully this drought ends and these people are able to get some much needed rain very soon.