What was the Dust Bowl

 During the 1920’s, farmers plowed the great plains to make way for crops

The loss of prairie grass and overproduction of crops exhausted the land making it unsuitable for farming
A severe drought gripped the Great Plains in the early 1930s
Wind scattered the topsoil, exposing sand and grit
The resulting dust traveled hundreds of miles
One storm in 1934 picked up millions of tons of dust from the Plains an carried it to the East Coast









http://www.english.illinois.edu/maps/depression/dustbowl.htm