Saturday, February 24, 2007
Dust Bowl
The wind today, and continuing tonight, is horrific. According to weather reports, we've seen gusts well past 50 MPH today. The sky confirms it. Late today, as my wife and I were out for a brief drive, the sky turned an ugly beige as the wind carried with it the dull reddish dust from west Texas. Even inside the car, it was hard to breathe...every breath took in an uncomfortable mist of west Texas dust. The dust took over he skyline...ugly, dull, beige. Ugh! I hear the wind, hours later, and the forecast is for more of the same. Tons and tons of dust and sand are airborne, swishing around the sky, wondering where to stop and deposit a mass of ugly dust. I don't much like this. I wonder if the Depression and the dust bowl were like this. We have it much easier today. I'm glad my last name is not Joad. I would not have dealt very well with the challenges. I should be very thankful to have been born much later.
1 comment:
I've seen some documentary footage on the dust bowl years on the Canadian prairies - I think it was in an NFB film. It did look pretty much as you describe. What was always incredible (to me) was the way that the dust blew around and created drifts, almost identical to snowdrifts, that buried fences, houses and farm equipment. Must have been amazing to see that going on (and very unpleasant too).
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