Dave & Stephanie
The 'dust bowl' was a severe drought that lasted from 1931 to 1939. It affected primarily the southern high plains and just happen to coincide with the economic depression that started in 1929. Agriculture practices of that period made the land particularily susceptible to soil erosion and a lot of that land should never have been plowed up anyhow. There are many websites that have photos of the dust storms blowing in and some with photos of the drifted dust nearly covering wagons and horse drawn implements. A lot of land suffered permanent damage due to loss of topsoil but most has recovered enough to grow grass but according to 'experts' it takes nearly 500 years to reach 'climax' stage for native prairie. With intensive grazing that will probably never happen.

The last several years have been a severe drought in the northern high plains. However the dust storms have been very limited. We did have a state senator that died in a dust storm last spring in an auto pileup on the interstate where the visability was reduced to zero.

Apparently such droughts are not uncommon in the US. This site attributes climate change to the Cow Creek Massacre of 1325. [www.usd.edu]