[Beck]

Serious question here - Then, what's this dustbowl thing I've been hearing about?

Midwest, USA. The open prairie was being farmed by homesteaders. The breaking of the sod to make it suitable for farming also meant that the protection the sod gave from air-borne soil erosion was also lost. This isn't significant when the moisure content of the soil is high enough which was the case for a number of years. The early thirties saw a drought hit the region and the moisture content wasn't there to hold the soil. The great winds that come down from the Rockies as storm fronts move east would sweep down farmers' fields lifting huge amounts of topsoil into large dust storms. The dust would penetrate into everything. Many of the storms would Last for days coating everything with a fine layer of dust. The erosion that occurred was made worst by the popular farming method of the time of plowing in long continuous furrows. With nothing to stop it, the wind would run down the furrows stripping the field bare of its topsoil. Many farms were destroyed by the lack of rain and lost of topsoil. This lead to a great exodus of many of the affected people to California along US Route 66 which is why this road became know as the mother road (so named by John Steinbeck in the book, The Grapes of Wrath, the name stuck).