Geoscience Reference
In-Depth Information
figu r e 11. Dust storm approaching a midwestern town during the Dust Bowl in 1932.
(Photo from the Natural Resources Conser vation Ser vice, U. S. Department of Agriculture.)
that the loose soils they were creating had nothing to stabilize them should
drought return to the region, but they assumed the abundant rainfall of the
early twentieth century would continue. Over a few short years, the prairie
lands were ploughed so deeply and grazed so heavily that almost all the native
grasses were gone and the land let vulnerable.
h e West began its decline into drought in 1930. Many of the farmers
held on, hoping the rains would return as they always did. But the drought
continued unabated for eight years. In the early 1930s, strong winds began
roaring over the prairies, creating a new and more visible catastrophe. h e
winds swept up topsoil from the Great Plains, forming thick clouds of dust,
silt, and sand and darkening the skies—covering the earth like a blanket of
dirty snow. h e dust seemed to i nd its way everywhere: seeping under doors
and through window cracks into the houses and into food stores, clothes
drawers, beds, eyes, noses, and scalps.
h e dust storms, or “black blizzards,” blew across hundreds of miles, even
reaching as far as Washington, D.C., New York, and New England. Some
reports described the dust falling on ships sailing across the Atlantic Ocean,
and, when lot ed high enough to be entrained by the jet stream, the dust
reached as far away as Europe.
