Springtime On Dry Plains; Winds Power Dust Cloud 200 Miles Wide, 1,000 Ft High Across North TX, NM

[hatrack]

A wall of dust as tall as 1,000 feet and 200 miles wide that roared across parts of West Texas and New Mexico is yet another sign of how rain-starved the region is.

National Weather Service meteorologist Charles Aldrich in Lubbock said Wednesday that the dust that lifted into the air on Tuesday evening came ahead of a fast-moving cold front that reached the city, already more than 1.5 inches behind on precipitation this year as drought lingers. Most of the .17 inches of moisture that Lubbock’s gotten this year has been from snow and freezing precipitation.

Wind gusts Tuesday evening reached 50 mph and it took about 30 minutes for the leading wall of dust to move from the north end of Lubbock County to its southern border. Dust hung in the air afterward for hours and the strong winds persisted.

Visibility was reduced to about a mile in Lubbock. Northwest of Lubbock in Muleshoe and Friona the visibility was zero, Aldrich said. Aldrich says the dust storm began in Amarillo and the wall of fine soil particles extended west into New Mexico and east to near Post, about 40 miles southwest of Lubbock. The front began in Kansas, and once it reached the parched Panhandle around Amarillo, the dust began to get kicked up. It worsened as it moved south toward Lubbock. “It’s drier up there, but it’s even drier down here,” Aldrich said.

EDIT

http://www.claimsjournal.com/news/southcentral/2014/03/14/245937.htm

[Vogon_Glory]

1. The Dust Bowl Returns And The Rethigs Will Blame

The dust bowl returns and the Rethugs blame "liberals" and Satan.

[procon]

2. I lived in that area

Watching the approach of an haboob dust storm was terrifying. The dark, roiling cloud bank of talcum powder-fine dust was a hundred feet high and came roaring across the arid flatlands like a runaway freight train. They were usually accompanied by hail and intense lightening, and sometimes it rained mud.

There was no escaping the dust. Even with wet towels stuffed around the doors and windows, it was everywhere and coated everything... clothing, furniture, even food. We resorted to tying wet bandanas over our mouth and nose, but it was still very hard to breathe.

I was there in the 70's, and the haboob storms were made worse in that area by the prevalence of dust-bowl era farming practices and over-grazing. Politically, socially and financially, those big, wealthy landowners were very influential in squelching any effort to change their existing methods.