Black Sunday Storm

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Black Sunday was a particularly serious dust storm, or black blizzard, that took place during the Dust Bowl era on April 14, 1935.

The storm began in the mid afternoon. A long drought during the first half of the 1930s, combined with a lack of knowledge of conservation techniques, caused excessive topsoil erosion on farmlands in the Midwest. Disastrous dust storms like these forced many farmers to leave their homes to start a new life elsewhere, especially California. The storm itself was created by a combination of dry topsoil and high (60 mph) winds.

The Black Sunday storm was the worst dust storm in the Great Plains during the 1930s. It is estimated to have removed 300,000 tons of topsoil from the area known afterwards as the Dust Bowl. The storm of black dust resulted from prolonged drought and overplowing in the Great Plains, which destroyed the sod and left topsoil exposed.

The cloud of dust was being carried aloft by the windy turbulent air behind a strong cold front that started in Nebraska in the morning and that reached Texas by late afternoon. Long distance airplane flights had to ascend to 20,000 feet to avoid the cloud, and all airports between Albuquerque and Kansas City were closed.

Much of the dust was advected westward around the southwest periphery of the high pressure area. The cloud was carried north-westward into Colorado and New Mexico, and into Arizona and Utah. Complicating matters further, a new frontal system moved eastward into Utah on April 16^th, raising countless tons of dust from locally overworked fields . This gave nearly all of northwest Utah its worst dust storm in recorded history.

http://www.charlierussell.org/blacksunday.htm

Photos courtesy NOAA's National Weather Service (NWS) Collection

Charts courtesy NOAA Central Library Data Imaging Project

On the 15th the low pressure system shown over Nevada would move eastward into Utah and deepen.