Red flags are flying ...

The Sun struggles to cut through the dirt - and all that can be seen is a vaporous halo where ol' Sol used to be.

Photographed just south of Amarillo, Texas, February 29, 2012.



Click to enlarge photo
(C) Steve Douglass

Another day in Amarillo, another duster forecast. Yes, we are used to the winds of February and March. The atmosphere here is almost always in motion.

Early settlers understood this and used the wind to pump life-giving moisture out of the aquifer.

Thousands of windmills dot the landscape from South Texas up into Canada. Today we are harnessing the wind and turning it into electricity as evident by the many wind- charger farms that are multiplying like Texas jackrabbits.

But since the drought began - about two years ago- and since the dying grasslands have no grip on the soil - whenever the winds get up, so does the earth. On days like these you can feel it on your teeth, your ears and especially your eyes.

It seeps into our cars, our homes and our lungs. It gets into everything and it is getting steadily worse.

A few days ago (overnight) we received some much needed rain. It came in the form of drizzle and by the morning we had received almost a quarter of an inch.

But by mid-morning the winds got their back up - soon gusting upwards to sixty miles an hour and in no time the moisture we needed so badly - had been stripped away.

By late afternoon it was like walking in a brown dream. Dust hung everywhere and settled over the city like a brown blizzard.

The highways quickly became accident-ways as brownouts caused by blowing soil made for multi-car pileups.

But still - with all the grit in the air - with all the mobile real estate which we all ingested in one way or another - it was nothing compared what Dust Bowl survivors endured.

Imagine not being able to see inside your own home - or having to breathe through a damp rag because to ingest the air was like trying to inhale inside a flour sack?

That's what happened on Black Sunday - April 14 1935.

Today the winds will gust, the dirt will fly and it will continue to strip away the soil until there's not much of it left.

Then again will come the true dusters - like that of Black Sunday.

Pray for rain.

-Steve Douglass