First, a high-pressure system in winter sat over the west coast of the United States and turned away wet weather – a pattern similar to that which occurred in the winter of 2013-14. Left: A dust storm hits Elkhart, Kansas, in May 1937. But a comparison of weather data to models looking at La Niña effects showed that the rain-blocking high-pressure system in the winter of 1933-34 overrode the effects of La Niña for the western states. The smaller birds fly until they are exhausted, then fall to the ground, to share the fate of the thousands of jack rabbits which perish from suffocation."[5]. In the winter of 1934-1935, the snow in New England was red. Get breaking news alerts and special reports. Arthur Rothstein, Farm Security Administration. Brown colors of the Palmer Drought Severity Index, or PDSI, indicate strong drought conditions across the United States in the summer of 1934. Cattle farming and sheep ranching had left much of the west devoid of natural grass and shrubs to anchor the soil,[5] and over-farming and poor soil stewardship left the soil dehydrated and lacking in organic matter. Photographed by J.H. A farmer The 1930s Dust Bowl drought had four drought events with no time to recover in between: 1930-31, 1934, 1936 and 1939-40. Election Day could turn into "Election Week" with rise in mail ballots. "People caught in their own yards grope for the doorstep. This drought and the almost constant dust storms, gave the Mid-West the name “Dust Bowl.”. Battleground Tracker: Tight race in Florida, Georgia, North Carolina, CBS News/BET poll: Black voters motivated, but concerned about votes counting, A behind-the-scenes look at how mail-in ballots are processed. Out of fear of the meager crops getting eaten, towns would get together and slaughter whole herds. For comparison, the average extent of the 2012 drought was 59.7 percent. Dust storms like the ones in the 1930s aren't a problem in North America today. Photographed by Marion Post Wolcott. But on the occasional bright day and the usual gray day we cannot shake from it. Prevailing west-to-east winds occasionally brought tons of dust a thousand miles or more, to the Eastern Seaboard. "It was the worst by a large margin, falling pretty far outside the normal range of variability that we see in the record," said climate scientist Ben Cook at NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York. [1] It was one of the worst dust storms in American history and it caused immense economic and agricultural damage. It took years to replant the native prairie grass in the Great Plains, and even longer before crops could be planted once more. drifts along a fence are seen north of Dalhart, Texas, June 1938. Get the latest dust storm news, articles, videos and photos on the New York Post. Enter your email address to follow this blog and receive notifications of new posts by email. [5] Here he describes an approaching dust storm: "… At other times a cloud is seen to be approaching from a distance of many miles. io9.gizmodo Kitchen windows are sealed up with towels to protect against dust storms, PDSI was calculated from monthly averages of precipitation, temperature and other factors from 1934, available from the Climate Research Unit. Marshals find 45 missing children; 169 arrested, Battleground Tracker: Latest polls, state of the race and more, 5 things to know about CBS News' 2020 Battleground Tracker, CBS News coverage of voting rights issues. For five hours, a fog of prairie dirt enshrouded landmarks such as the Statue of Liberty and the U.S. Capitol, inside which lawmakers were debating a soil conservation bill. [image-69]According to the recent Fifth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, or IPCC, climate change is likely to make droughts in North America worse, and the southwest in particular is expected to become significantly drier as are summers in the central plains.

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