1930s Dust Bowl Conditions Are Returning To The Middle Of The United States
By Michael Snyder/End of the American Dream April 09, 2025
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Originally published at End Of The American Dream
Absolutely gigantic dust storms are "triggering massive highway pileups" in the middle of the country, virtually the entire Southwest is currently experiencing at least some level of drought, and dust storms and soil erosion are now costing our economy more than 100 billion dollars every year.
The same conditions that prevailed during the Dust Bowl years of the 1930s are returning, and scientists have warned us that the megadrought that has now begun could continue for a long time to come.
Last month, a "series of enormous dust storms" caused a tremendous amount of chaos throughout the middle portion of the nation...
A series of enormous dust storms swept the plains states last week, triggering massive highway pileups, a spike in emergency room visits, and "dirty rain" a thousand miles away.
The storms were driven by winds in excess of 70 mph across a vast stretch of dry fields and prairie from New Mexico and western Texas.
In Kansas, at least 55 vehicles were involved in one particular highway pileup, and eight people ended up dying...
At least eight people died after more than 55 vehicles were involved in a crash due to a dust storm in Kansas, authorities said Saturday.
At 3:22 p.m. local time on Friday, high winds moved into northwest Kansas from Colorado, causing a severe dust storm, leading to traffic to slow due to near-zero visibility, resulting in multiple crashes on I-70.
Eight people died in the interstate pile-up, and numerous injuries were reported, the Kansas Highway Patrol said Saturday.
There were also vehicle pileups and traffic fatalities in Texas...
In Texas, four people were killed in car crashes around the city of Amarillo caused by a dust storm on Friday, according to the state's public safety department.
One of the deaths happened after three lorries collided with four other vehicles in Palmer County, Bovina's fire chief Cesar Marquez said. Another occurred after a pile-up of an estimated 38 cars.
"It's the worst I've ever seen," public safety department sergeant Cindy Barkley said, calling the near-zero visibility a nightmare.
Please read that last sentence again.
This is something that I keep hearing over and over.
Nobody has ever seen it this bad.
As far north as Wisconsin, people were being warned to stay inside during the dust storms that suddenly erupted last month...
In their wake, air quality readings spiked well beyond levels deemed hazardous by the Environmental Protection Agency. Public health officials warned millions of people as far away as Wisconsin to stay indoors as the dust swept through.
"I've never been hit in the face with a shovel, but I imagine it feels something like this," said a social media user in New Mexico who was diagnosed with dust pneumonia after visiting the hospital.
When the dust is so bad that it makes you feel like you have "been hit in the face with a shovel", that is a sign that Dust Bowl conditions have returned to your community.
Let's just be real honest here.
Everything is not going to be okay, and the Southwest just keeps on getting even drier.
According to one report, the state of Texas "has struggled mightily in the rainfall department" so far in 2025...
Since the start of 2025, Texas has struggled mightily in the rainfall department. With the exception of the Piney Woods and parts of Southeast Texas near Houston, it has been a very, very dry start to the year.
If current trends continue, it won't be too long before many areas of the state simply start running out of water...
Texas officials fear the state is gravely close to running out of water.
Towns and cities could be on a path toward a severe shortage of water by 2030, data compiled in the state's 2022 water plan by the Texas Water Development Board indicates.
Despite all of our advanced technology, we just can't defeat a megadrought.
Farther north, water levels in Lake Powell and Lake Mead have dropped to extremely low levels once again...
"Combined storage in Lake Powell and Lake Mead is down 691 [thousand-acre-feet] from this time last year, with storage at 33 percent of capacity."
The lakes provide water to tens of millions of people across the U.S. Southwest and Mexico, support agricultural operations, and generate hydroelectric power.
Earlier estimates suggested Lake Mead would begin 2025 below the 1,075 foot level that triggers mandatory conservation measures under federal drought contingency plans.
This has become a recurring theme.
We are highly dependent on Lake Powell and Lake Mead, and if they keep going dry we are going to have a major crisis on our hands.
A decade ago, scientists tried to warn us that this would be coming...
Here in the American southwest, droughts have become something to expect, but a new study warns that the southwest and central plains could face a megadrought later this century unlike anything seen for millennia.
"It could be as bad as the 1930s Dust Bowl, but lasting for 35 years," study co-author Toby Ault of Cornell told an audience of reporters at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, where the results were announced Thursday.
The megadrought that they were warning about is now here.
In fact, we are being told that since the year 2000 conditions in the western half of North America "have been slightly drier on average than a similar megadrought in the late 1500s"...
The latest climate data show that the years since 2000 in western North America -- from Montana to California to northern Mexico -- have been slightly drier on average than a similar megadrought in the late 1500s.
Williams shared his findings with the Los Angeles Times, providing an update to his widely cited 2022 study, which he co-authored with scientists at Columbia University's Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory.
Let that sink in.
What we are experiencing now is even worse than the megadrought of the 1500s.
If this megadrought persists, the Dust Bowl conditions in the middle of the country will only intensify.
So if you think that the dust storms are bad now, just wait, because you haven't seen anything yet.
Originally published at End Of The American Dream
