The Dust Bowl

If you've been to Iraq, you have some idea of what the Dust Bowl was like. The incredible dust storms in the American Great Plains that took place from 1930 until 1936 were largely the fault of poor land management. Farmers turned over virgin soil, killing the grasses that had kept moisture in the dirt. The drought of the 1930's turned the soil into dust and the huge dust storms picked up the precious topsoil and blew it, literally across the continent, and into the Atlantic Ocean. Half a million people were left homeless before the dust storms subsided.