More dust storms expected as Texas drought lingers
‘Thing that is scary … dust storm is the same type of dust storm from during the 30s’
John Holsenbeck  /  AP

A billowing wall of red dust approaching Lubbock, Texas, on Monday. Meteorologists say people living on the parched High Plains of Texas could see more of the massive dust storms reminiscent of the Dust Bowl years as a record drought tightens itsgrip across the Southwest.

By BETSY BLANEY

LUBBOCK, Texas — The towering wall of billowing red dust roaring across the blue West Texas sky took Monroe Debusk back more than eight decades to the Dust Bowl years when he was growing up on his family’s cotton farm.

The 90-year-old farmer looked out his window Monday and saw the sky darken as a rare 1.5-mile-tall, 250-mile-long dust cloud stretched across the rain-starved land and blotted out the sun.

“I didn’t do anything — just thought back to the way it used to be,” Debusk said, recalling the massive dust storms that overwhelmed the region in the 1930s. “That’s the way they were.”

Meteorologists say people living on Texas’ parched plains could see more dust storms as a record drought tightens its grip across the Southwest. At least six sandstorms hit Phoenix this summer, with the most powerful striking on July 5 and measuring a mile high. But experts say another Dust Bowl is unlikely thanks to modern irrigation and farming techniques aimed at holding soil in place.

Dust storms form when wind whips up loose soil. They aren’t unusual in West Texas, although the size and speed of Monday’s cloud was rare. Typically, the wall of dirt climbs to only about 1,000 feet in that area, not the 8,000 feet seen with the latest storm, experts said.

The wind picked up with a drop in pressure along the edge of a fast-moving cold front, a pattern that typically happens in the fall and winter, meteorologists said. When the cloud hit Lubbock, winds speeds reached 74 mph in some places and visibility was far less than a quarter of a mile.

The wind knocked down tree limbs, which fell on utility lines, knocking out power in parts of the city of about 210,000 people. Dust lingered in the air afterward, filling people’s ears and nostrils and leaving grit in their teeth. A layer of dirt covered the pavement, cars and anything else left outside.

“The thing that is scary is this exact type of dust storm is the same type of dust storm from during the 30s,” said Tom Gill, a geology professor at the University of Texas-El Paso who has studied dust storms for years.

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