Dust Bowl

Dust Bowl, area of some 50 million acres (20 million hectares) in the southern Great Plains region of the United States that, during the 1930s, suffered violent dust storms owing to accelerated soil erosion. Grassland had been plowed up in the 1920s and 1930s to plant wheat. A severe drought then bared the fields, and high winds blew the topsoil into huge dunes.