The Dust Bowl was a man-made environmental disaster. A long drought in the 1930s triggered disaster. Wind carried off the topsoil--dried out by intensive farming--in enormous dust storms that turned day into night as they destroyed farms. The Pare Lorentz Film Center at the Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential Library and Museum has produced this new animated video on FDR and the Dust Bowl. This video was created by FDR’s great-granddaughter Perrin Ireland. We hope teachers will use it to help the

In the 1930s, the US experienced what has been called its greatest ecological disaster, when the dust bowl ravaged the midwest, eroding topsoil, destroying crops, and displacing millions. As climate change exacerbates drought across much of the US in places like Phoenix and the larger Colorado River basin, damaging dust storms and haboobs are becoming more common, leading many experts to ask whether we might be heading into another dust bowl. | PBS Digital Studios