<p>The Dust Bowl was caused by farmers tilling up too much soil. However, there were also other factors. Weather also played a key role. Because there were several years of drought, and farmers had plowed up so much ground, when high winds came along the soil was blown off the ground, and the rest is history. This became somewhat of a vicious circle: no crops grew and so the dust could not be controlled.</p>

<p>As far as it happening again... Yes, I suppose it could and on a large scale, but run for cover. Because there would be some other very serious issues. Its occurrence would likely mean that there was little to no water available for irrigation. If that were the case, then I can not imagine how people would be responding to it.</p>

CC BY-SA 3.0
2014-05-02T19:21:26.450Z
2014-06-25T05:26:30.960Z
2014-06-25T05:26:30.960Z
L.B.
<p><a href="http://hthttp://weather.about.com/od/weatherfaqs/f/dustbowl.htmtp://" rel="nofollow noreferrer">Climate modelling</a> by NASA suggests a change in the Jet Stream was partially responsible for the 1930s drought in the US.</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Cooler than normal tropical Pacific Ocean temperatures and warmer than normal tropical Atlantic Ocean temperatures created ideal drought conditions due to the unstable sea surface temperatures. The result was dry air and high temperatures in the Midwest from about 1931 to 1939.</p>
<p>Sea surface temperatures create shifts in weather patterns. One way is by changing the patterns in the jet stream. In the 1930's, the jet stream was weakened causing the normally moisture rich air from the Gulf of Mexico to become drier. Low level winds further reduced the normal supply of moisture from the Gulf of Mexico and reduced rainfall throughout the US Midwest.</p>
</blockquote>
<p><a href="http://o9.com/study-reveals-the-dust-bowl-was-the-worst-drought-in-1-1646560925" rel="nofollow noreferrer">Other conditions</a> at the time included:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>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. Second, the spring of 1934 saw dust storms, caused by poor land management practices, suppress rainfall.</p>
</blockquote>

CC BY-SA 3.0
2015-04-30T09:03:52.553Z
2015-04-30T09:11:04.773Z
2020-06-18T08:25:19.090Z
Fred
<p>There are two books I love to recommend on this. <a href="https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&amp;rct=j&amp;q=&amp;esrc=s&amp;source=web&amp;cd=2&amp;cad=rja&amp;uact=8&amp;ved=0CCcQFjAB&amp;url=http%3A%2F%2Fen.wikipedia.org%2Fwiki%2FThe_Worst_Hard_Time&amp;ei=DS89VbPmE8qsogSjhYD4BA&amp;usg=AFQjCNHaJygdo0JduwPygm0HEWkp4AFXog&amp;sig2=72s0snV5i0o8t8ZmoH08Rw&amp;bvm=bv.91665533,d.cGU" rel="nofollow">The Worst Hard Time</a> is a history book with a lot of first-person reports and a summary of what people were thinking <em>before</em> the dust bowl -- what the optimism looked like. The saddest bit I remember was that there were responsible ranchers who didn't over-plow, who had intact prairie -- until their neighbor's dust buried them and killed their grass and herds. </p>

<p>The other is on huger scale, <a href="http://www.ucpress.edu/book.php?isbn=9780520272903" rel="nofollow">Dirt: The Erosion of Civilizations</a>. Big erosive events are recorded in sediment fans (often in the ocean at river-mouths). Analyzing these, Montgomery argues that there have been six cases of organization->ag->regional market->over-farming->erosion->collapse, and that we're plausibly in the seventh. </p>

CC BY-SA 3.0
2015-04-26T18:36:14.627Z
2015-04-30T07:04:22.227Z
2015-04-30T07:04:22.227Z
cphlewis
<p>Regarding the "and could it happen again" part of your question; possibly, due to climate change. As others on here have noted, the original dust bowl was a combination of crappy soil conservation practices and a prolonged drought. Our soil conservation practices have improved a lot, but we still plant water-intensive crops like monoculture corn in places where it historically never would have grown. For instance, in the southern Great Plains where it's really dry and native vegetation usually consists of low-shrubs and short grasses. We're able to grow crops in these areas now, because of center-pivot irrigation technology (started in the 1940's) and groundwater pumping. But as our global climate system continues to warm and our groundwater resources become increasingly scarce, it's unlikely that we will be able to continue these practices in the future. Some authors think that a sudden, sustained drought in these areas consistent with what was observed in the dust bowl could lead to similar problems in the Great Plains observed in the 1930's. Just finished reading this paper in Nature Plants on this very topic : <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/nplants2016193" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https://www.nature.com/articles/nplants2016193</a></p>

CC BY-SA 3.0
2017-05-23T04:57:37.247Z
2017-05-23T22:24:54.783Z
2017-05-23T22:24:54.783Z
Kyle Taylor
<p>The Dustbowl occurred during the 1930s because of a combination of man-induced drought and the (mis)use of relatively new farming practices.</p>

<p>In the 1920s, the spread of automotive (and tractor) technologies made it possible to "plow up" the Great Plains. This resulted in the loss of a lot of natural moisture and the creation of drought conditions in lands that had been marginal to begin with regarding the adequacy of the water supply. </p>

<p>Even by the 1930s we <em>still</em> had not learned our lesson. There were conservation techniques using the new technologies, but we weren't using them. For example, the tractors would still plow up and down slopes (the "easy" way) making it easy for topsoil to run down hills and into the rivers. More to the point, the newly dry and loosened topsoil would then go into the air and create a "Dust Bowl" when the winds kicked up. There was a real fear that the agricultural Midwest (basically the Plains states) would turn into a desert.</p>

<p>It was only after an additional half a decade of bitter trial and error (and a new generation of better educated farmers) that things changed. By the <strong>mid</strong> 1930s, it was a relatively new technique called <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contour_plowing">contour farming</a>, which consisted of using motor vehicles to plow horizontally around hills instead of vertically, that saved the day. Also, farmers started planting trees as "windbreaks" in strategic locations.</p>

<p>IMHO, it could happen again, probably in a developing country like China, which is trying to "catch up" to the United States, and has been prone to adopting our bad habits of an earlier era.</p>

<p>Bottom line, the Dust Bowl was (largely) a man-made, not a natural phenomenon. And the operative principle was attributed to Confucius: </p>

<blockquote>
  <p>"Men are the same everywhere. Only their habits are different."</p>
</blockquote>

CC BY-SA 3.0
2014-04-22T01:22:14.173Z
Thanks! After you mentioned it happening again in countries like China, I looked it up and found this:http://www.earth-policy.org/plan_b_updates/2012/update110  Quoting from the article, "Today two new dust bowls are forming: one in northern China and southern Mongolia and the other in Africa south of the Sahara. ...the main culprit in Asia and Africa is overgrazing. Although arid or semiarid grasslands are typically better suited for grazing livestock than for farming, once they are overstocked their protective grass covering deteriorates and they face erosion all the same."
Azzie Rogers
CC BY-SA 3.0
2014-04-22T02:03:55.653Z
You might also mention the practice of planting large swaths of trees to provide a wind break to mitigate winds stirring up the dust that was used in the 1930s.
casey
CC BY-SA 3.0
2014-04-25T16:16:39.297Z
there are some interesting counter measures in Africa and China ("Great Green Wall") https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Green_Wall and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Green_Wall
GeoEki
CC BY-SA 3.0
2014-04-30T19:35:32.047Z
Small issue, but the *drought* wasn't man-made.  It just came.  Also, I agree that poor farming habits and motorized farming caused the loose topsoil which caused the dust, but the salvation was a combination of [farming practices](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drought_in_the_United_States#1930s) (including crop rotation and fallow fields), [legislation](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_Resources_Conservation_Service#History), and good old-fashion rain.
Richard
CC BY-SA 3.0
2014-05-22T01:52:39.113Z
The dust bowl was a combination of anthropogenic **and** natural phenomenons. Severe drought hit the mid-west.
derelict
CC BY-SA 3.0
2015-04-26T18:30:31.553Z
My first soil science prof took us to the gorgeous wheatfields of the Palouse, where we stopped to see the *continuing* erosion. She said that two places are tied for deepest soil loss in the 20th c: the most damaged parts of the Palouse, and the loess region of China during the "Great Leap Forward".  Even more than what Confucius said: our habits are the same everywhere and only our justifications are different. (( The loess regions started with deeper and finer soil than most of the world, so could lose more. Ukraine might be the third similar place. ))
cphlewis
CC BY-SA 3.0
2015-04-26T21:30:22.177Z
Along the lines of counter measures - about 17 minutes into this PBS special, they talk about how one man spent years turning a desert back into farm land.     Using trees as wind breaks, also using termite mounds and moss as methods to keep water in the soil.   It's quite inspirational.  The whole show is good, but the part 17 minutes in is amazing.    http://video.pbs.org/video/2365431678/
userLTK
CC BY-SA 3.0
2017-05-23T05:43:22.193Z
Honestly, though, being such a rare event, the scientific ability to draw large data and explanations is fairly weak.  We can run simulations, look at changes since, and perhaps get the suspicion it was largely man-made, but it's a tenuous estimation.
JeopardyTempest
CC BY-SA 4.0
2021-11-01T14:59:48.347Z
really "it could happen again, probably in a developing country like China, which is trying to "catch up" to the United States" you think they're idiots - Mao's gone.
onepound
CC BY-SA 3.0
2014-04-22T00:49:11.637Z
2014-09-22T13:47:03.853Z
2014-09-22T13:47:03.853Z
Tom Au
<p>Most of us know about the Dust Bowl: the huge storms of dirt and dust that swept across America in the 1930's. But what I'm wondering is... </p>

<ul>
<li>What actually triggered the start of the Dust Bowl?</li>
<li>Is it very likely that it will occur again?</li>
</ul>

<p>I've often heard that it was the farmers plowing up to much soil, but that doesn't make any sense to me because we're definitely plowing up more soil now than we were then.</p>

CC BY-SA 3.0
2014-04-21T23:56:40.277Z
You know, this is actually one of the most interesting questions I've seen on the site so far. +1
hichris123
CC BY-SA 3.0
2014-04-21T23:59:20.970Z
i agree, favorited.
Neo
CC BY-SA 3.0
2014-04-25T13:58:31.817Z
I'm unsure if storms is an applicable tag, perhaps drought or desertification would also be appropriate?
Siv
CC BY-SA 3.0
2014-04-25T16:08:57.267Z
@Siv Good idea. Editing...
Azzie Rogers
CC BY-SA 3.0
2014-05-07T00:59:56.893Z
The Grapes of Wrath is a good read.
derelict
<climate><soil><dust-bowl>
What started the US Dust Bowl of the 1930s, and could it happen again?
Azzie Rogers
# What started the US Dust Bowl of the 1930s, and could it happen again?

(Asked by: username_0 on 2014-04-21)

Most of us know about the Dust Bowl: the huge storms of dirt and dust that swept across America in the 1930's. But what I'm wondering is...

* What actually triggered the start of the Dust Bowl?
* Is it very likely that it will occur again?

I've often heard that it was the farmers plowing up to much soil, but that doesn't make any sense to me because we're definitely plowing up more soil now than we were then.

**Tags:** climate, soil, dust-bowl

> **Comments:**
> **username_1**: You know, this is actually one of the most interesting questions I've seen on the site so far. +1  
> **username_2**: i agree, favorited.  
> **username_3**: I'm unsure if storms is an applicable tag, perhaps drought or desertification would also be appropriate?  
> **username_0**: @username_3 Good idea. Editing...  
> **username_4**: The Grapes of Wrath is a good read.  

---

## 5 answers

### Answer by username_9 on 2014-04-22. Score: 47 | Accepted answer

The Dustbowl occurred during the 1930s because of a combination of man-induced drought and the (mis)use of relatively new farming practices.

In the 1920s, the spread of automotive (and tractor) technologies made it possible to "plow up" the Great Plains. This resulted in the loss of a lot of natural moisture and the creation of drought conditions in lands that had been marginal to begin with regarding the adequacy of the water supply.

Even by the 1930s we *still* had not learned our lesson. There were conservation techniques using the new technologies, but we weren't using them. For example, the tractors would still plow up and down slopes (the "easy" way) making it easy for topsoil to run down hills and into the rivers. More to the point, the newly dry and loosened topsoil would then go into the air and create a "Dust Bowl" when the winds kicked up. There was a real fear that the agricultural Midwest (basically the Plains states) would turn into a desert.

It was only after an additional half a decade of bitter trial and error (and a new generation of better educated farmers) that things changed. By the **mid** 1930s, it was a relatively new technique called [contour farming](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contour_plowing), which consisted of using motor vehicles to plow horizontally around hills instead of vertically, that saved the day. Also, farmers started planting trees as "windbreaks" in strategic locations.

IMHO, it could happen again, probably in a developing country like China, which is trying to "catch up" to the United States, and has been prone to adopting our bad habits of an earlier era.

Bottom line, the Dust Bowl was (largely) a man-made, not a natural phenomenon. And the operative principle was attributed to Confucius:

> "Men are the same everywhere. Only their habits are different."

> **Comments:**
> **username_0**: Thanks! After you mentioned it happening again in countries like China, I looked it up and found this:http://www.earth-policy.org/plan_b_updates/2012/update110  Quoting from the article, "Today two new dust bowls are forming: one in northern China and southern Mongolia and the other in Africa south of the Sahara. ...the main culprit in Asia and Africa is overgrazing. Although arid or semiarid grasslands are typically better suited for grazing livestock than for farming, once they are overstocked their protective grass covering deteriorates and they face erosion all the same."  
> **username_10**: You might also mention the practice of planting large swaths of trees to provide a wind break to mitigate winds stirring up the dust that was used in the 1930s.  
> **username_11**: there are some interesting counter measures in Africa and China ("Great Green Wall") https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Green_Wall and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Green_Wall  
> **username_12**: Small issue, but the *drought* wasn't man-made.  It just came.  Also, I agree that poor farming habits and motorized farming caused the loose topsoil which caused the dust, but the salvation was a combination of [farming practices](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drought_in_the_United_States#1930s) (including crop rotation and fallow fields), [legislation](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_Resources_Conservation_Service#History), and good old-fashion rain.  
> **username_4**: The dust bowl was a combination of anthropogenic **and** natural phenomenons. Severe drought hit the mid-west.  
> **username_7**: My first soil science prof took us to the gorgeous wheatfields of the Palouse, where we stopped to see the *continuing* erosion. She said that two places are tied for deepest soil loss in the 20th c: the most damaged parts of the Palouse, and the loess region of China during the "Great Leap Forward".  Even more than what Confucius said: our habits are the same everywhere and only our justifications are different. (( The loess regions started with deeper and finer soil than most of the world, so could lose more. Ukraine might be the third similar place. ))  
> **username_13**: Along the lines of counter measures - about 17 minutes into this PBS special, they talk about how one man spent years turning a desert back into farm land.     Using trees as wind breaks, also using termite mounds and moss as methods to keep water in the soil.   It's quite inspirational.  The whole show is good, but the part 17 minutes in is amazing.    http://video.pbs.org/video/2365431678/  
> **username_14**: Honestly, though, being such a rare event, the scientific ability to draw large data and explanations is fairly weak.  We can run simulations, look at changes since, and perhaps get the suspicion it was largely man-made, but it's a tenuous estimation.  
> **username_15**: really "it could happen again, probably in a developing country like China, which is trying to "catch up" to the United States" you think they're idiots - Mao's gone.  

---

### Answer by username_5 on 2014-05-02. Score: 9

The Dust Bowl was caused by farmers tilling up too much soil. However, there were also other factors. Weather also played a key role. Because there were several years of drought, and farmers had plowed up so much ground, when high winds came along the soil was blown off the ground, and the rest is history. This became somewhat of a vicious circle: no crops grew and so the dust could not be controlled.

As far as it happening again... Yes, I suppose it could and on a large scale, but run for cover. Because there would be some other very serious issues. Its occurrence would likely mean that there was little to no water available for irrigation. If that were the case, then I can not imagine how people would be responding to it.


---

### Answer by username_7 on 2015-04-26. Score: 5

There are two books I love to recommend on this. [The Worst Hard Time](https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=2&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=0CCcQFjAB&url=http%3A%2F%2Fen.wikipedia.org%2Fwiki%2FThe_Worst_Hard_Time&ei=DS89VbPmE8qsogSjhYD4BA&usg=AFQjCNHaJygdo0JduwPygm0HEWkp4AFXog&sig2=72s0snV5i0o8t8ZmoH08Rw&bvm=bv.91665533,d.cGU) is a history book with a lot of first-person reports and a summary of what people were thinking *before* the dust bowl -- what the optimism looked like. The saddest bit I remember was that there were responsible ranchers who didn't over-plow, who had intact prairie -- until their neighbor's dust buried them and killed their grass and herds.

The other is on huger scale, [Dirt: The Erosion of Civilizations](http://www.ucpress.edu/book.php?isbn=9780520272903). Big erosive events are recorded in sediment fans (often in the ocean at river-mouths). Analyzing these, Montgomery argues that there have been six cases of organization->ag->regional market->over-farming->erosion->collapse, and that we're plausibly in the seventh.


---

### Answer by username_6 on 2015-04-30. Score: 4

[Climate modelling](http://hthttp://weather.about.com/od/weatherfaqs/f/dustbowl.htmtp://) by NASA suggests a change in the Jet Stream was partially responsible for the 1930s drought in the US.

> Cooler than normal tropical Pacific Ocean temperatures and warmer than normal tropical Atlantic Ocean temperatures created ideal drought conditions due to the unstable sea surface temperatures. The result was dry air and high temperatures in the Midwest from about 1931 to 1939.
>
> Sea surface temperatures create shifts in weather patterns. One way is by changing the patterns in the jet stream. In the 1930's, the jet stream was weakened causing the normally moisture rich air from the Gulf of Mexico to become drier. Low level winds further reduced the normal supply of moisture from the Gulf of Mexico and reduced rainfall throughout the US Midwest.

[Other conditions](http://o9.com/study-reveals-the-dust-bowl-was-the-worst-drought-in-1-1646560925) at the time included:

> 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. Second, the spring of 1934 saw dust storms, caused by poor land management practices, suppress rainfall.


---

### Answer by username_8 on 2017-05-23. Score: 2

Regarding the "and could it happen again" part of your question; possibly, due to climate change. As others on here have noted, the original dust bowl was a combination of crappy soil conservation practices and a prolonged drought. Our soil conservation practices have improved a lot, but we still plant water-intensive crops like monoculture corn in places where it historically never would have grown. For instance, in the southern Great Plains where it's really dry and native vegetation usually consists of low-shrubs and short grasses. We're able to grow crops in these areas now, because of center-pivot irrigation technology (started in the 1940's) and groundwater pumping. But as our global climate system continues to warm and our groundwater resources become increasingly scarce, it's unlikely that we will be able to continue these practices in the future. Some authors think that a sudden, sustained drought in these areas consistent with what was observed in the dust bowl could lead to similar problems in the Great Plains observed in the 1930's. Just finished reading this paper in Nature Plants on this very topic : <https://www.nature.com/articles/nplants2016193>


---

