Lightning cracked, cars pulled over along the interstate, and wind-driven rain pelted the windshield. I continued on, slowing to 25 mph for several miles.

Nearing home, police had blocked off the main drag that leads to my neighborhood. A torrent of water swept across a dip between two hills. Fortunately, my turn came before the traffic snarl, and I made it safely into the driveway.

The next day, I got on the computer to see that Fayetteville remained in “moderate drought,” according to the U.S. Drought Monitor.

To the south, Robeson County was in “severe drought” even as the National Weather Service issued flood warnings.

There are good scientific explanations as to why drought and deluge can coincide.

North Carolina still hasn’t recovered from the lack of rain last year. In the western part of the state, rainfall is still sporadic. As a result, groundwater tables remain low.

Amy Pickle of the Southern Environmental Law Center recently explained why that should matter not just to those who rely on well water.

When someone sees the local reservoir full, that tells only part of the story, she said.

That reservoir is filled by streams, and those streams depend not only on each rain and its runoff but on the groundwater that seeps through the soil and trickles into the streams. A lower-than-normal water table means that stream flows drop rapidly and that lake levels are more prone to fall.

Pickle spoke to me after a recent meeting of a state House committee gnawing over Gov. Mike Easley’s proposals to address drought.

The legislation would give state officials power to impose conservation measures on local water systems during the two most-severe stages of drought. It would also lay out the governor’s powers to force water sharing during emergency water shortages.

The bill, in its current form, doesn’t go as far as Easley and environmentalists had hoped. They wanted uniform water restrictions and specific water-reduction targets.

But there’s a bigger problem here — the focus on drought.

Droughts come and go. And tying water conservation to drought creates exactly the reaction you’d expect when someone sees a flash flood one evening and is told there’s a drought the next: “Yeah, sure.”

What won’t go away is the state’s population. It’s growing dramatically, especially in the Piedmont. There’s only so much water to meet the needs of that population.

This bill does nothing to address long-term conservation issues, such as how to decouple water consumption from local systems’ bottom lines.

Right now, for many people, the more water that you use, the more money your water system makes. It’s not exactly a formula that encourages systems to encourage conservation.

Thorny issues like these will require thoughtful solutions that go well beyond reacting once drought is upon us.