A new study shows dust storms have become more common and more severe on the Great Plains, leading some to wonder if the United States is headed for another Dust Bowl, reports Roland Pease for Science. With nearly half the country currently in drought and a winter forecast predicting continued dry weather for many of the afflicted regions, dust storms could become an even bigger threat.
In the 1930s, the Dust Bowl was caused by years of severe drought and featured dust storms up to 1,000 miles long. But the other driving force behind the plumes of dust that ravaged the landscape was the conversion of prairie to agricultural fields on a massive scale—between 1925 and the early 1930s, farmers converted 5.2 million acres of grassland over to farming, reported Sarah Zielinski for Smithsonian magazine in 2012.
Hardy prairie grasses would have likely withstood the drought, but crops covering the newly converted tracts swiftly bit the […]
I know nothing about the “Great Plains” but I do know that here in central Pa. the weather has changed a lot. We had a very cold spring and I could not get my plants started early enough, but we are experiencing a warmer fall so I may still get some ripening on my peppers and tomatoes. I brought some tomatoes in to put on the kitchen table to ripen, because we are starting to get freeze warnings now, which will kill my outdoor peppers which I grow in buckets.