Justin Turcotte
EF5
No storms to chase but plenty of dirt to eat in eastern North Dakota. Round 3 of the spring dust bowl moved in Saturday the 17th. Round 1 led to a fair amount of black dirt getting deposited in my back yard. Round 2 was mild but still led to a bunch of dust to clean out of most windows. The latest round was accompanied by north/northwest winds gusting to 50 mph. At the peak of the event the sun was blotted out of the sky with visibility locally reduced to zero. Somewhat surpising is many fields did already have some crop poking up which would help increase friction. I opted not to drive into the worst areas as I did not want to replace the air filter nor risk a collision with another vehicle. Legend has it some of these dust stoms in the early 1900s combined with falling snow to produce black blizzards. The term black blizzard was also used to describe the worse dust storms in the Southern Plains during the 1930's dust bowl.
What concerns me after witnessing a few of these events now is farmers are taking land out of CRP, cutting down shelter belts, and eliminating other soil conservation efforts such as prarie grass strips in order to get a few more bushels of crop due to high commodity and land prices. This short shightedness will probably cost this farmer a significant proportion of his crop this year. If the dry wind didn't fry his young crop then then the static electricity in the blowing dust did. As I look out the window I can already see some brown areas in the field. One not very bright farmer in the area opted to burn some CRP land in a 30 mph wind. This fire nearly torched 30 homes. Due to the relatively short growing season here many farmers will till their fields the first chance they get, 30 mph wind or not. This of course leads to tons of topsoil being advected into oblivion. Ironic our remedy for various fossil fuel problems had led to choking on dirt.
What concerns me after witnessing a few of these events now is farmers are taking land out of CRP, cutting down shelter belts, and eliminating other soil conservation efforts such as prarie grass strips in order to get a few more bushels of crop due to high commodity and land prices. This short shightedness will probably cost this farmer a significant proportion of his crop this year. If the dry wind didn't fry his young crop then then the static electricity in the blowing dust did. As I look out the window I can already see some brown areas in the field. One not very bright farmer in the area opted to burn some CRP land in a 30 mph wind. This fire nearly torched 30 homes. Due to the relatively short growing season here many farmers will till their fields the first chance they get, 30 mph wind or not. This of course leads to tons of topsoil being advected into oblivion. Ironic our remedy for various fossil fuel problems had led to choking on dirt.
