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What was the Dust Bowl and what effect did it have?

The Dust Bowl was an area in the United States where a period of drought lasted from 1934 until 1937. The states that comprised the Dust Bowl were Kansas, southeastern Colorado, northeastern and southeastern New Mexico, and the panhandles (narrow projections of state territories) of Oklahoma and Texas. A drought is defined differently in different parts of the world. According to the U.S. Weather Bureau, a drought is a period of twenty-one or more days during which rainfall is no more than 30 percent of the average rainfall for a specific place at a specific time of year.

In the Dust Bowl, soil from nearly 150,000 square miles (388,500 square kilometers) of farmland was blown by the wind into dust storms. Immense clouds of dust filled the sky as far east as New York City and Baltimore, Maryland. The most severe dust storms, which people called "black...

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1. Natural Disasters
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   16. What was the Dust Bowl and what effect did it have?
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