Monday, November 13, 1933

Went to school. Daddy took us kids. Had History test. Graded our English papers. Stayed at Mrs. Raifert's.

The dust storm (AKA "black blizzard") that stripped topsoil from desiccated
South Dakota farmlands is the first in a series of bad dust storms that began in 1933.

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). The phenomenon was caused by severe drought coupled
with decades of extensive farming without crop rotation, fallow fields, cover crops or other
techniques to prevent wind erosion. Deep plowing of the virgin topsoil of the Great Plains
had displaced the natural deep-rooted grasses that normally kept the soil in place and
trapped moisture even during periods of drought and high winds.