The “Black Blizzards” of the 1930’s Dust Bowl

November 28, 2012 By

A Texas dust storm in 1935

 

I was watching Ken Burns' PBS special "The Dust Bowl" and saw some pictures of these amazing storms rolling acorss the plains. The documentary was a bit dry, but full of interesting, and scary, stories about who the Dust Bowl came to be and how devastating it was. Here's some of what I learened. 

Farming Techniques Helped Cause the Dust Storms

The PBS special does a great job of explaining in detail how farming techniques played such a key role in the increase in number and severity of the dust storms. Here's a good summary from Wikipedia:

World War I increased agricultural prices, which also encouraged farmers to dramatically increase cultivation. In the Llano Estacado, the area of farmland doubled between 1900 and 1920, and land under cultivation more than tripled between 1925 and 1930.
 
The favored agricultural methods of farmers during this period created the conditions for large scale erosion under certain environmental conditions. The widespread conversion of the land by deep plowing and other soil preparation methods to enable agriculture virtually eliminated the native grasses which held the soil in place and helped retain moisture, even during dry periods. Furthermore, cotton farmers left fields bare over winter months, when winds in the High Plains are highest, and burned the stubble as a means to control weeds prior to planting, thus depriving the soil of organic nutrients and surface vegetation.
 
The environmental conditions created when severe drought struck the Great Plains region in the 1930s exposed the increased risk for erosion that was created by the farming practices in use at the time. The drought dried the topsoil and over time it became friable, reduced to a powdery consistency in some places. Then, without the indigenous grasses in place, during the drought, the high winds that commonly occur on the plains created the massive duststorms that marked the Dust Bowl period.
 

"Black Sunday" — The Sky Went Black

April 14, 1935 was the day of the worst of the many dust storms of that year, and one of the worst ever. The Perrytown Pipeline gives a quick summary. 

The skies were clear, and temperatures rose to the 90s. Local residents spent the afternoon outdoors enjoying the warm weather and respite from the recent dust storms.
 
But as the afternoon progressed, the temperature began to drop. (Some reports say the temperature fell as many as 50 degrees over the course of a few hours that evening.) Around 5 p.m., winds billowing in from the north at 50 miles per hour brought a massive dust storm.
 
Like a wave, an 8,000-foot wall cloud of dust engulfed Perryton. Though it was mid afternoon, the sky was darker than midnight. Visibility was reduced to zero; even your hand in front of your face was impossible to see. Some thought the world had come to an end. For more than 10 minutes, no one could see anything.
 

Black Sunday marked the turning point in the Federal Government's recognition of the soil erosion occurring in the Dust Bowl region, labeling it a "national menace." Hugh Bennett, considered the father of the soil conservation movement, had long tried to draw attention to the farmer's plight. Up to that point, he had been largely ignored, and the Dust Bowl was seen in the nation's capitol as just another facet of the depression. Already scheduled to deliver an address to Congress concerning the matter, he heard tales of the massive Black Sunday storm, spreading its dust towards the east. He stalled his report until the dust settled over Washington D.C. Upon its arrival, many of the Congressmen were horrified at the fine, powdery sand choking their throats and scratching their eyes. Using the moment to full effect, Bennett proclaimed "This, gentlemen, is what I've been talking about." On April 27th, 1935, the Soil Conservation Service (SCS) was created, and placed under the control of Bennett.

 

It Could Happen Again

Scientific America recently had an article outlining how the current drought could lead to another Dust Bowl if it conintues much longer:

This October's dust storm, which followed preparation of fields for fall planting, could be the first act of an encore performance. "If the drought holds on for two or three more years, as droughts have in the past, we will have Dust Bowl conditions in the farming belt," says Craig Cox, an agriculture and natural resources expert with the Environmental Working Group, a nonprofit using public information to protect public health and the environment. "It could be in a sense an invisible Dust Bowl—not like the big storms before, but withered crops, dry streams and other disasters that accompanied the Dust Bowl. Wind erosion is tremendously damaging and hard to control. A lot of practices that control wind erosion require growing things, and if those weren't in place when the drought hit, it's almost impossible to put them in place now."
 
Since the 1940s agriculture on the semiarid southern Great Plains—Colorado, Kansas, Oklahoma and Texas—has relied on irrigation. On the high plains of Texas, tens of thousands of wells pumping from the 10-million-year-old Ogallala Aquifer have depleted it by 50 percent. Given variation in its depth and the difficulty of pumping at low water levels, most of the remaining reservoir will likely be useless for irrigation within about 30 years. At the same time, climate change has brought less rain as well as hotter temperatures that increase evaporation—forcing farmers to use even more water for irrigation. "We have agriculture systems in semiarid areas," Hayhoe says. "We built these vulnerabilities into the system and climate change is the final straw that may break the camel's back."

A Clip from the Ken Burns' Special on the Black Blizzards

Watch The Dust Bowl: Black Blizzards on PBS. See more from The Dust Bowl.

 

Images from Wikipedia.

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