The Dust Bowl & The Great North American Heat Wave of 1936, from Ordway, South Dakota

[GON]

. Here is a brief story of the dust bowl from 1936. Interesting how life was in this part of the USA less than 100 years ago. I find most fascinating how Americans adapted and overcame the harsh climate at the time.

Ordway, South Dakota July 12th, 1936

"The Dust Bowl & The Great North American Heat Wave of 1936"
This farm having suffered from drought and years of failed crops & finances dried up, now sits deserted. "The Great Depression" along with, "The Dust Bowl," caused this type of scene all over South Dakota & the plains states.

Often families packed up & left in the middle of the night. Literally there one day, gone the next. Within a mile of this farm, three more abandoned farms suffered the same fate of, "Given Over To Drought." They were forced off the land because of no money left & the drought caused crops to fail-therefore no income from selling wheat, corn, or milk, eggs & cattle. Desperate times lead to desperate measures & they packed everything & left.

To make things even worse. "The Great North American Heat Wave of 1936," saw temperatures climb early in the year to 100 degrees & it would last for days, sometimes weeks at a time. This began in early May and lasted through the summer all the way into the later part of September. No air conditioning in those days. Many people would move the kitchen to the basement or have it in another small building near the house.

 

[Pablo]

No rain here for almost 4 months now.

Record setting.

Upper 70's, near 80°F in October, almost unheard of.

Some of my soil has giant 1.5" wide cracks. Nasty dry. Air filled with smoke from several fires in the nearby and distant mountains.

Not pleasant. Woke barely able to breathe.

 

[wwillson]

The area of Ordway is north of Aberdeen, which is a rich agricultural area. They get enough moisture that they don't need irrigation. Hard to believe conditions in the dust bowl days got so bad. That's what happens when you get a high pressure parked over you with a weak jet stream. Settling dry air no rain.

 

[zrxkawboy]

I love history, especially local/regional stuff, and Ordway is about 100 miles from where I live.

If anyone is looking for history similar to this, but at the opposite extreme weather-wise, look into the Children's Blizzard. There are some real heart-breaking stories associated with it.

 

[Passport1]

My mother was 16 then and lived about 80 miles west of Ordway. Small place called Glencross near Mobridge. Her family lived on a farm and somehow they all managed to survive. She talked about how hard life was then. She left and went to nursing school in Rapid City then off to the army nurse corps in WW2. Never went back there to live, just to visit relatives.

 

[4WD]

No rain here for almost 4 months now.

Record setting.

Upper 70's, near 80°F in October, almost unheard of.

Some of my soil has giant 1.5" wide cracks. Nasty dry. Air filled with smoke from several fires in the nearby and distant mountains.

Not pleasant. Woke barely able to breathe.

I remember deep cracks in our black land 50 years ago - and have not seen them since …

 

[JohnnyG]

Yeah, people have been sounding the alarm about climate change for something over 100 years now. Good reminder.

 

[ka9mnx]

A big contributing factor was how the US government AG department encouraged farmers to cut down trees and hedge rows to grow more crops. Nothing to break the wind.

 

[ecotourist]

The area of Ordway is north of Aberdeen, which is a rich agricultural area. They get enough moisture that they don't need irrigation. Hard to believe conditions in the dust bowl days got so bad. That's what happens when you get a high pressure parked over you with a weak jet stream. Settling dry air no rain.

I don't think it was as simple as a parked high pressure area. That would explain a single hot dry summer but the same thing happened year after year for most of a decade.

In southern Saskatchewan it was heart breaking. The crops would come up and look wonderful, but then it wouldn't rain for months on end. The crops would just wither and die. And the hot winds blew much of the soil away.

An early explorer (John Palliser) declared southern Saskatchewan and Alberta (since called the "Palliser Triangle") as semi desert, unsuitable for agriculture because it was so dry. The described area would extend well into the US central plains as well. Most years it's a major cereal crop and oil seed growing area, though not in the 1930s.

 

[bullwinkle]

A big contributing factor was how the US government AG department encouraged farmers to cut down trees and hedge rows to grow more crops. Nothing to break the wind.

And the topsoil blew away, in a huge dust plume. Even here in the East, there’s historical pictures from the Dust Bowl days of air so brown with dust & dirt it blocked out the sun.