The 1930's & 1950' Dustbowl: Midwestern United States

Source: www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/dustbowl/maps/index.html

This map shows the Dustbowl of the 1933-1939 drought in America. The full drought area affected 65% of America, much larger than the above Dustbowl image. This drought blew from the rapidly developing oil fields in the northern half of Texas. The wind patterns here are consistent enough to warrant a specific meteorological name: The Texas Panhandler.(described at bottom). This consistently repeated system is a source of another atmospheric disturbance common in the U.S. Midwest: Tornado Alley.

The two dustbowl droughts are compared below in parallel columns to show how the first drought (1930s) was tied to the northern part of Texas because the primary Texas oil fields were in the northern part of the state, e.g., Panhandle and East Texas. The second drought (1950s) involved a larger part of Texas because the oil field source was from the Permian Basin, West Texas and New Mexico. Note the descriptions of the oil fields and drought areas relative to the areas of Texas. Blaming the droughts on farmers is misleading.

1933-1940 Dustbowl-I	1950-1956 Dustbowl-II
Descriptions of drought: "Dust bowl is a popular term describing a region of 150,000 square miles (390,000 sq km) in southwestern Kansas, southeastern Colorado, northeastern New Mexico, and the Oklahomas and Texas panhandles, which was devastated by drought in 1933-1939." Encyclopedia Americana, 1998, Vol. 9, page 497b. "The Dust Bowl drought was a natural disaster that severely affected much of the United States during the 1930s. The drought came in three waves, 1934, 1936, and 1939-40, but some regions of the High Plains experienced drought conditions for as many as eight years." US Droughts	Description of Drought "During the 1950s, the Great Plains and the southwestern U.S. withstood a five-year drought, and in three of these years, drought conditions stretched coast to coast. The drought was first felt in the southwestern U.S. in 1950 and spread to Oklahoma, Kansas and Nebraska by 1953. By 1954, the drought encompassed a ten-state area reaching from the mid-west to the Great Plains, and southward into New Mexico. The area from the Texas panhandle to central and eastern Colorado, western Kansas and central Nebraska experienced severe drought conditions. The drought maintained a stronghold in the Great Plains, reaching a peak in 1956." US Droughts "Texans endured a 7-year uninterrupted drought (1950-56), which some say was the worst in 700 years. Experts believe this drought began in the Lower Rio Grande Valley and West Texas in 1949. From 1949-51, Texas rainfall dropped by 40% and West Texas experienced severe declines. By 1952, more than half the state received 20 to 30 inches less rainfall than normal. In 1952, Texas' monthly rainfall average fell to just 0.03 inches -- the lowest level since the Weather Bureau began collecting records in 1888. For the first time since 1914, Lubbock did not even record a trace of rain. Even hardy west Texas mesquite trees began to die. By 1953, 75% of Texas recorded below normal amounts of rainfall." The Drought of 1950's
Upstream Oil Field Development: Texas Woodbine Field--how many miles in size " The largest and most prolific oil reservoir in the contiguous United States. Since its discovery on October 5, 1930, some 30,340 wells have been drilled within its 140,000 acres to yield nearly 5.2 billion barrels of oil from a stratigraphic trap in the Eagle Ford-Woodbine group of the Cretaceous." Methane "at the end of 1933, the East Texas field reported its greatest production year, when 11,867 wells brought up 216,291,397 barrels of oil and 7,805,000,000 cubic feet of gas." East Texas Oilfields "One historian estimated that in 1934 approximately a billion cubic feet of unassociated gas was stripped and released or flared daily in the Texas Panhandle alone." Methane (while only, based on previously quotation, 7 billion were sold in the whole year of 1933 out of 365 billion released.).	Upstream Oil Field Development: West Texas The West Texas fields (Permian Basin) came into their own in the late 1940's, booming in the early 1950's: "Drilling in the region rose 50 percent between 1947 and 1948 and again between 1949 and 1950. Between 1946 and 1951 the number of independents and major oil companies doing business in Midland rose from 135 to 363, as companies such as J. S. Abercrombieqv of Houston and Rowan Drilling of Fort Worth established local offices. Among the newcomers were growing numbers of young men from other parts of the country; George H. W. Bush ...." Oil In Texas The post-war boom in energy needs were also met by the Texas Panhandle which had increased production and flaring with the the areas of the first Dustbowl (1930s) being doubly hit.s
Terminating Factor: "Finally, the opening of the giant east Texas field in the early 1930's produced such a flood of oil that the Texas legislature eventually adopted a policy of limiting production to protect the market and to conserve the state's most valuable natural resource." Encyclopedia Americana, 1998, "Texas", Vol 26, page 549b. In 1939, the beginning of World War II in Europe disrupted European petroleum markets. American exports to Europe fell by nearly a quarter. In Texas the Railroad Commission responded by cutting allowables by one-fifth and by increasing shut-down days. With further curtailments in 1942, Texas was producing less than 60 percent of its potential, and both exploration and field development slowed. Oil In Texas	Terminating Timeframes and Factors The drought subsided in most areas with the spring rains of 1957. US Droughts When domestic demand fell in 1957 and 1958, Texas allowable production was cut in half by the state agency responsible for stable markets, the Texas Railroad Commission. Oil In Texas was reduced to about 30% by 1962. Production shifted from oil under high pressure of natural gas to pumps and strippers. The CO2 was no longer released because the bulk had been burned off.

Prevailing Wind System: Texas Panhandler:

• The Texas Panhandler describes seasonal moisture laden air coming from the Gulf of Mexico which collides with the cold stream out of Canada. At other times, these consistent wind patterns have resulted in another name for a common meteorological Midwest phenomenon: Tornado Alley. These systems result in slow moving snow systems.What happens if the precipitation characteristics of the Gulf moisture is reduced by adding CO2 from oil field flarings? Drought. Lower snowpacks.
• Tornado Alley is the Fault of the Farmers!!! The 1930's US drought and the current African droughts are blamed on poor agricultural practices by farmers. Maybe a little bit. If this were true, then American farmers must hold the blame for causing tornados. Consider the following maps. If the farmers can be held responsible for the droughts in this meterological similar area, then they must be responsible for the tornados. Of course, two problems show not falseness of this reasoning but the very reasoning that farmers are responsible. Tornados ravaged the Midwest before Native Americans ever saw a farmer. And, with the new "drought" preventing farming techniques, tornados have not gone away. What went away with the droughts was the what caused the droughts: Texas oil field flaring of gas.

  Dustbowl	Tornado Alley

  The cause for tornado alley is colliding of the winds from the jetstream with those of the Gulf.

• For actual satellite images of wind and cloud movement over hours or days, click Prevailing Winds.