Sunday, May 1, 2011

HOW WINDY IS IT?

I am so sick of wind.  Sick.  Of.  It. However in trying to not complain and whine, I thought of another time that it was so windy - The Dustbowl, or "The Dirty Thirties".  I looked The Dustbowl up on Wikopedia and found some interesting info.  The Dustbowl was from 1930-1936 (and 1940 in some areas).   It was basically caused by a severe drought coupled with decades of farming without crop rotation.  The dust blackened the sky reaching all the way to the East Coast.  Much of the soil ended up in the Atlantic Ocean.   The dust storms were called, "Black Blizzards" or "Black Rollers."  It affected 100,000,000 acres in Texas, Oklahoma, New Mexico, Colorado, and Kansas.  People got so tired of the wind and dust that some people actually went crazy. 

The biggest storm was on April 14th, 1935,  known as "Black Sunday" and twenty of the worst storms occurred.   Visability was reduced to a few feet.  The dirt was so thick that a man could get lost a half a mile from his house.  Children died of "dust pneumonia", by literally suffocating.  Animals would suffocate on dirt, their insides packed with soil.  Anyone caught outside dropped to the ground and was in danger of being buried alive.  The dirt actually blew all the way to Chicago, where dirt fell like snow.  

Last night the wind started blowing like crazy here when we went to bed.  It blew ALL night long and continued - in the same strength - all day long today until tonight.  Along with that, it snowed here - at least on the east side of town where Gilbert Girl lives.  We had some of the weirdest looking clouds in the sky today.  But with all the crazy weather going on in the US - tornados, flooding, wild fires - I'll take the wind, even though I'll probably keep complaining about it.  :0) 

3 comments:

Stick said...

AS you know, the wind blows here as well. I've talked about it enough. We can have winds of 40-60 MPH and the wind won't even be blowing in the little town just 35 miles north of here.

Delirious said...

I'm the weird one. I LOVE the wind! I love the way it feels, I love the way it sounds. We had some really strong winds for a couple of days, but things have calmed down now

Nene said...

Delirious, you obviously haven't had as much wind as we've had. :0+