Black Sunday 1935

    On April 15, 1935, the worst dust storm of the Dust Bowl, and that the country has ever seen, struck the United States. A cold front from Canada swept through the U.S. that morning, picking up loose soil along the way (Tarshis). The most hard-hit areas were the U.S. southern planes, including Texas, Oklahoma, and Kansas (Greenspan). Poor agricultural practices resulted in severe soil erosion, leaving thousands of acres of bare soil. This, plus the droughts of the thirties, proved to be the perfect conditions for a massive dust storm. The dust cloud was 1,000 miles long and blew at speeds up to 100 miles per hour (Blakemore). The first wall of dust hit Oklahoma around 4 p.m. and an even worse wave hit parts of Texas around 7:20 p.m. (National Weather Service). 

The Black Sunday dust wall approaching Rolla, Kansas (Greenspan)

This day is referred to as "Black Sunday" because it seemed as if a mountain of darkness was sweeping over the planes. A sunny day was soon turned into a "horrible blackness that was darker than the darkest night" (National Weather Service). Drivers had to take refuge in their cars while other residents hid under beds and in storm shelters or fire stations (Greenspan). It's unclear if any deaths were specifically related to the dust storms on Black Sunday, but there were many injuries. 300,000 tons of dirt were dumped across 100 million acres of land. This destroyed wildlife and made agriculture impossible. Fields were leveled and many people went blind (Blakemore). What crops were left of the Dust Bowl withered and remaining cattle were wiped out by the storm. The land finally seemed impossible to revive, so many migrated to California after the Black Sunday storm. 

    Black Sunday, specifically, had many implications on current land use practices and government relief. This event turned soil conservation into a national priority. The storm's destructiveness forced the government to pay farmers to take marginal lands out of production (Greenspan). In 1936, Congress financed a program that would pay farmers to use new farming techniques, such as contour plowing, that would conserve topsoil and gradually restore the land. The Soil Conservation Service was established a year later, and "by the following year, soil loss had been reduced by 65%" even though the drought continued up until 1939 (West). This proves that human use of the land was the main contributing factor to the Black Sunday dust storm and the Dust Bowl as a whole. The knowledge we gained from these incidences have helped us to prevent another devastating dust storm in the southern planes. 

Visibility of Garden City, Kansas 15 minutes after storm hits
(National Weather Service).

Visibility of Garden City, Kansas minutes before 
the dust cloud arrived.
(National Weather Service).

Footage from Black Sunday. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7xfiwICl7SI)

Drought-plagued farmers in the Plains were overwhelmed when a massive dust storm hit on Sunday, April 14, 1935. This was nothing like previous dust storms of the Dust Bowl. Daylight turned to night in Oklahoma and Texas.

Sources

Blakemore, E. (2017, January 18). Black Sunday: The Storm That Gave Us the Dust Bowl. Retrieved December 11, 2020, from https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/63098/black-sunday-storm-gave-us-dust-bowl

Greenspan, J. (2015, April 14). What Happened on Black Sunday? Retrieved December 11, 2020, from https://www.history.com/news/remembering-black-sunday

Tarshis, L., & Brown, B. (2019). THE DAY THE SKY TURNED BLACK: In 1935, people of the Southern Plains         suffered through one of the worst environmental disasters in U.S. history: Black Sunday, the biggest dust storm the country has ever seen. Junior Scholastic/Current Events, 9, 16.

US Department of Commerce, N. (2017, April 14). The Black Sunday Dust Storm of April 14, 1935. Retrieved December 11, 2020, from https://www.weather.gov/oun/events-19350414

West, L. (n.d.). The Dust Bowl: The Worst Environmental Disaster in the United States. Retrieved December 11, 2020, from https://www.thoughtco.com/worst-us-environmental-disasters-1203696