Severe drought conditions struck the Southern Great Plains starting in 1930. Overfarmed and overgrazed land in several states began to blow away in the drought. Nineteen states became part of the dust bowl. Worst hit were Kansas, Texas, Oklahoma, New Mexico, Arkansas, and Nevada.

Winds whipped dust over the plains, darkening the sky for days. Thick dust covered everything and even got inside well-sealed homes. Many residents suffered chest pains and difficult breathing from “dust pneumonia.”

Folks called the dreaded dust storms “black blizzards.” These storms reached Washington DC and the East Coast, blotting out the sun and the Statue of Liberty. It even coated ships on the Atlantic Ocean with a fine layer of dust.

The worst storm came on April 14, 1935. The Sunday morning started off with clear skies. Winds died down. Folks ventured to church, hoping for rain to replenish the baked earth.

Instead, a Canadian cold front clashed with warm air in the Dakotas. The temperature fell 30 degrees. Frenzied winds created a dust cloud hundreds of miles wide and thousands of feet high. The dust storm headed to Colorado, Kansas, Oklahoma, and Texas.

Skies turned black. Folks sheltered in homes, barns, and fire stations. People caught out driving hid in their cars. “You couldn’t see your hand before your face,” recalled folksinger, Woody Guthrie.

Scary conditions convinced some the end of the world was at hand. The worst conditions were in the Texas and Oklahoma panhandles where a massive dust wall resembled a tsunami on land. Winds reached 60 MPH.

Reporters who wrote about the storm on Black Sunday referred to the southwest as a Dust Bowl for the first time.

For many residents, this storm was the last straw. They packed up and headed to California.

The drought lasted until 1939 when the rains finally returned, but not before 400,000 folks moved from the Great Plains.

-Sandra Merville Hart

 

Sources

“Dust Bowl,” Library of Congress, 2018/01/08 http://www.loc.gov/teachers/classroommaterials/presentationsandactivities/presentations/timeline/depwwii/dustbowl/.

History.com Staff. “Dust Bowl,” History.com, 2018/01/08 http://www.history.com/topics/dust-bowl.

History.com Staff. “Remembering Black Sunday, 80 Years Later,” History.com, 2018/01/08 http://www.history.com/news/remembering-black-sunday-80-years-later.

“The Black Sunday Dust Storm of April 14, 1935,” National Weather Service, 2018/01/08 https://www.weather.gov/oun/events-19350414.