Black Blizzard on the History Channel
* Thursday, November 13 08:00 AM
* Thursday, November 13 02:00 PM
See also http://www.history.com/shows.do?action=detail&episodeId=366826
Take a front row seat on a period of U.S. history from 1930-1940 when America’s heartland was ravaged by a weather phenomenon that became known as a “black blizzard.”
Watch as scientists and special effects experts recreate the black blizzards in amazing detail and reveal that this was a man-made disaster. Discover how these phenomena form, what they’re made of, and how they affect people’s health and the environment. Learn how a black blizzard emerged so ferociously that it seemed like a moving mountain range creating enough static electricity to power New York City. Hear the story of the people who
refused to leave their land and learn the history of the Great Plains and how it came to be settled.
Rating: TVPG Running Time: 120 minutes
There was also a PBS program “Surviving the Dust Bowl” and its web site contains some other resources, interviews, etc.
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/dustbowl/index.html
More About the Film “Surviving the Dust Bowl”
Lured by the promise of rich, plentiful soil, thousands of settlers came to the Southern Plains, bringing farming techniques that worked well in the North and East. The farmers subsequently plowed millions of acres of grassland, only to have the rains stop in the summer of 1931. The catastrophic eight-year drought that followed led observers to rename the region “The Dust Bowl.”
Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dust_Bowl
The Dust Bowl, or the dirty thirties, was a period of severe dust storms causing major ecological and agricultural damage to American and Canadian prairie lands from 1930 to 1936 (in some areas until 1940), caused by severe drought coupled with decades of extensive farming without crop rotation or other techniques to prevent erosion. It was largely a man-made disaster caused by an abnormally severe drought combined with the deep plowing of the virgin topsoil of the Great Plains, which killed the natural grasses. Such grasses normally kept the soil in place and moisture trapped, even during periods of drought and high winds.
Google: http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&hs=SmH&q=Oklahoma+dust+bowl&btnG=Search
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