Black Sunday (storm)
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Black Sunday was a particularly severe dust storm that occurred on April 14, 1935, as part of the Dust Bowl in the United States.[1] It was one of the worst dust storms in American history and caused immense economic and agricultural damage.[2] It is estimated that 300,000 tons of topsoil were displaced from the prairie area.[3]
On the afternoon of April 14, 1935, residents of several plains states were forced to take cover as a dust storm or "black blizzard" blew through the region. The storm first hit the Oklahoma panhandle and northwestern Oklahoma before moving south for the day.[1] It hit Beaver, Oklahoma, around 4 p.m.; Boise City around 5:15; and Amarillo, Texas, at 7:20.[1] The conditions were the most severe in the Oklahoma and Texas panhandles, but the storm's effects were also felt in surrounding areas.[1] Drought, erosion, bare soil, and winds caused the dust to fly freely and at high speeds.[4]
The term "Dust Bowl" initially described a series of dust storms that hit the prairies of Canada and the United States during the 1930s.[4] It now describes the area in the United States most affected by the storms, including western Kansas, eastern Colorado, northeastern New Mexico, and the Oklahoma and Texas panhandles.[5] The "black blizzards" started in the eastern states in 1930, affecting agriculture from Maine to Arkansas. By 1934, they had reached the Great Plains, stretching from North Dakota to Texas and from the Mississippi River Valley to the Rocky Mountains.[6] The Dust Bowl as an area received its name following the disastrous Black Sunday storm in April 1935 when reporter Robert E. Geiger referred to the region as "the Dust Bowl" in his account.[5]
Causes
Cattle farming and sheep ranching had left much of the west devoid of natural grass and shrubs to anchor the soil,[5] while over-farming and poor soil stewardship left the soil dehydrated and lacking in organic matter.[6] A drought hit the United States in the 1930s,[5] and the lack of rainfall, snowfall, and moisture in the air dried out the topsoil in most of the country's farming regions.
Effects
The destruction caused by the dust storms, and especially by the storm on Black Sunday, killed multiple people [7] and caused hundreds of thousands of people to relocate.[6] Poor migrants from the American Southwest (known as "Okies" - though only about 20 percent were from Oklahoma) flooded California, overtaxing the state's health and employment infrastructure.[8]
In 1935, after the massive damage caused by these storms, Congress passed the Soil Conservation Act, which established the Soil Conservation Service (SCS) as a permanent agency of the USDA.[9] The SCS was created to guide land owners and land users in reducing soil erosion, improving forest and field land, and conserving and developing natural resources.[8][10] This led to the Great Plains Shelterbelt project.