Black Sunday
On a bright spring afternoon in 1935, a black wall of dust thousands of feet high rolled across the Great Plains and turned day into night.
What was reported
After years of drought, the soil of the southern Great Plains had turned to dust. On Sunday 14 April 1935, a cold front picked it up and drove it south in a wall hundreds of kilometres long, moving at highway speed. People caught outside couldn't see their hands in front of their faces.
Many believed the end of the world had come. The next day, a reporter used the phrase 'the Dust Bowl', and it stuck.
Explanations offered
Decades of ploughing up native grassland, followed by drought, had left the soil bare to the wind. The storm and others like it led to new farming and soil-conservation methods across the United States.
- When
- 14 April 1935
- Where
- Guymon, Oklahoma, USA
- Witnesses
- Millions of people on the Great Plains
- Status
- Explained
Famous cases are real, widely reported events. Each file sets out what witnesses said and the explanations that have been offered, without taking a side.
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