"Around noon on January 21, 1932, a cloud ten thousand feet high from ground to top appeared just outside Amarillo...Nobody knew what to call it. It was not a rain cloud. Nor was it a cloud holding ice pellets. It was not a twister. It was thick like course animal hair; it was alive. People close to it described a feeling of being in a blizzard--a black blizzard, they called it--with an edge like steel wool. The weather bureau people in Amarillo were fascinated by the cloud precisely because it defied explanation...”
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"Around noon on January 21, 1932, a cloud ten thousand feet high from ground to top appeared
just outside Amarillo...Nobody knew what to call it. It was not a rain cloud. Nor was it a cloud holding
ice pellets. It was not a twister. It was thick like course animal hair; it was alive. People close to it described a feeling of being in a blizzard--a black
blizzard, they called it--with an edge like steel wool. The weather bureau people in Amarillo were
fascinated by the cloud precisely because it defied explanation...”
Primary Area’s of Impact
Causes of the Dust Bowl:- Extreme drought- Missuse of the land that took all of the nutrients out of it- Static electricity
"Every school in [Baca] county was closed for a week in March. At one school, children were trapped just
before the afternoon school bell, unable to go home. They spent the night holed up behind the thin walls of the wood-frame building, cold and
hungry. Stories like that made parents give up on school. It was too risky, and they did not see any
reason for it. Life's ambitions and dreams had dried up; people held to a few, desperate desires--a
longing to breathe clean air, to eat, to stay warm. School was a luxury."
"Dr John H. Blue of Cuymon, Oklahoma, said he treated fifty-six patients for dust pneumonia, and all
of them showed signs of silicosis; others were suffering early symptoms of tuberculosis. He was blunt. The doctor had looked inside an otherwise
healthy young farm hand, a man in his early twenties, and told him what he saw. 'You are filled
with dirt,' the doctor said. The young man died within a day."
"Desperate parents pleaded with the government men to help their families escape. Their children were being strangled by dust. In a month, a hundred families in Baca County gave up their property to the government
in return for passage away from land that was killing them."
Migration: U.S. Route 66
Hoovervilles: Shanty towns built by the homeless
These could be found across the US
The Face of Economic Poverty
Could anything similar to this ever happen again?
Phoenix, Arizona: 2011
Known as a Haboob, and comes before thunderstorms
Video from the History Channelhttp://www.history.com/topics/dust-bowl/videos#america-black-blizzard
What did Chicago and New York Experience?
What other names did the Dust Bowl/Dust Storms have?
What do you think is the most important thing to remember about the Dust Bowl?
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