{"id":4256,"date":"2026-07-11T10:37:10","date_gmt":"2026-07-11T10:37:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/nextcitydigest.com\/?p=4256"},"modified":"2026-07-11T10:37:10","modified_gmt":"2026-07-11T10:37:10","slug":"gongloff-the-us-is-getting-a-disaster-salad-with-dust-bowl-dressing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nextcitydigest.com\/?p=4256","title":{"rendered":"Gongloff: The US is getting a disaster salad with Dust Bowl dressing"},"content":{"rendered":"
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The Dust Bowl of the 1930s was a devastating but temporary confluence of human cluelessness and natural accident. It was also a demonstration of humanity\u2019s ability to wreck an environment when we really set our minds to it. Thanks to that dubious superpower, we\u2019re now living in a world of more and stronger natural disasters \u2014 including something that could soon look a lot like another Dust Bowl.<\/p>\n

Read more Horoscopes July 11, 2026: Lisa Rinna, don\u2019t sell yourself short<\/a><\/p>\n

The good news is that our power to spoil nature has a flip side: an ability to protect the environment and shield ourselves from its flare-ups. The bad news is that we still aren\u2019t using that side nearly enough.<\/p>\n

Here\u2019s how a \u201cmini-Dust Bowl\u201d could happen in the\u00a0U.S.\u00a0Plains in the next couple of years, according to a recent report from the private forecasting firm AccuWeather:<\/p>\n

Step one: Much of the region has been in deep drought for anywhere from months to years, including the northern Plains states of Colorado, Montana, Nebraska, the Dakotas and Wyoming, altogether home to 25% of the nation\u2019s cropland.<\/p>\n

Step two: An El Ni\u00f1o weather pattern has formed in the eastern\u00a0Pacific Ocean\u00a0and could be one of the strongest on record.<\/p>\n

Step three: One typical consequence of a strong El Ni\u00f1o is unusually dry weather in, uh-oh, the northern Plains.<\/p>\n

Step four: Given that strong El Ni\u00f1o effects usually linger for a couple of years, these already dry places could get really dry.<\/p>\n

The result probably wouldn\u2019t be a repeat of the Okies packing up their belongings and fleeing to\u00a0California. But it could be a yearslong period of extreme heat and drought, significant crop failures and dust storms. A disaster salad with Dust Bowl dressing, let\u2019s call it.<\/p>\n

\n<\/div>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t want to be an alarmist, but it\u2019s a situation that bears watching,\u201d meteorologist\u00a0Joel Myers, AccuWeather\u2019s founder and executive chairman, told me. \u201cWith a super El Ni\u00f1o, with effects that could last two to three years, the impacts could be significant.\u201d<\/p>\n

Smart farming<\/h4>\n

We have learned some important lessons since the original Dust Bowl that make a full repeat unlikely. Back then, the farmers that had settled the Midwest and Plains in previous decades ripped up native plants and overworked the soil, making it vulnerable to the series of droughts that started hitting in 1931. Today, we manage these lands much more intelligently. We\u2019ve restored natural grasses, cultivated windbreaks and adopted sustainable farming techniques, flexing the positive side of our superpower.<\/p>\n

\u201cEven when we had a huge drought in 2012, which was very, very bad, we didn\u2019t have another mini-Dust Bowl,\u201d\u00a0Stephanie Spera, a geography, environment and sustainability professor at the\u00a0University of Richmond, told me. She also pointed out that the southern Plains states of\u00a0Kansas, Oklahoma\u00a0and\u00a0Texas, site of 18% of\u00a0U.S.\u00a0cropland, tend to receive more rain during strong El Ni\u00f1os.<\/p>\n

Read more Asking Eric: Once again I\u2019m regretting my enthusiasm toward a stranger<\/a><\/p>\n

But those states would need a lot of rain to make up for nearly six years of drought,\u00a0Joel Lisonbee, a scientist with the National Integrated Drought Information System, wrote recently. Meanwhile, improved farming can\u2019t change how drought and heat interact to make each other worse as they did during the Dust Bowl. Physics hasn\u2019t changed since the 1930s.<\/p>\n

\n<\/div>\n

Dry, barren soil absorbs less heat, meaning it stays in the air. That\u2019s why the\u00a0U.S.\u00a0was one of the hottest places on Earth in the 1930s, setting freakishly high temperature records that stand today (supplying climate-change deniers with false talking points, but that\u2019s a different story). Hotter air hastens evaporation, which makes the dirt even drier, which makes the air even hotter, et cetera.<\/p>\n

Dry soil is also more likely to be picked up by the wind. Once it\u2019s in the air, it competes with moisture, making it harder for rain to form, which helps keep the drought going. And sometimes that dust in the wind gets caught in massive storms that darken skies and deliver dangerous lung-clogging particles hundreds of miles away.<\/p>\n

America\u2019s temperature extremes in the 1930s were a preview of what was coming after another century of humanity burning fossil fuels and spewing heat-trapping gases into the atmosphere. The planet is 1.4 degrees Celsius, or 2.5 degrees Fahrenheit, hotter today than preindustrial averages. All that extra heat makes the land drier, providing the ingredients for Dust-Bowl-like conditions.<\/p>\n

The western\u00a0U.S.\u00a0has been in a megadrought since the turn of the century, its worst since the reign of Charlemagne. It has always been subject to dry spells, but the current ones are mostly driven by heat rather than swings in precipitation, according to a 2024 study by Lisonbee and others that was published in the journal Science Advances.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, lesser versions of the dust storms that clouded skies from\u00a0Colorado\u00a0to\u00a0New York\u00a0in the 1930s are not only still with us, they\u2019re increasing in frequency and severity as the country warms. These cost $154 billion a year in damage in the\u00a0U.S.\u00a0alone, by one estimate, and deliver \u201cblood rain\u201d hundreds of miles away. It\u2019s no Great Depression, but it is depressing.<\/p>\n

System strain<\/h4>\n

Each new spell of drought and heat strains systems that evolved or were engineered under much different conditions. This produces what\u00a0Marouane Temimi, a professor of civil and environmental engineering at\u00a0Stevens Institute of Technology, calls \u201cecosystem and infrastructure fatigue.\u201d Lakes Mead and\u00a0Powell, the two biggest reservoirs in the\u00a0U.S., are approaching critically low water levels as the\u00a0Colorado River\u00a0dries. This threatens their dams\u2019 structural integrity and ability to produce hydroelectric power and deliver water to millions of people and acres of farmland downstream.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf these events get more frequent, there are lasting damages,\u201d Temimi told me.<\/p>\n

So what can we do? Acknowledging the existence of climate change, as the Trump administration refuses to do, is one place to start. Rapidly curbing fossil-fuel emissions is another. Short of those two miraculous occurrences, policymakers and planners need to prepare for an increasingly hot, dry, dusty world. We need to build infrastructure that uses less energy and water, plant crops that are able to withstand drought and harden communities against dust storms, drought and other disasters.<\/p>\n

In other words, it\u2019s time to stop looking to history for instruction when the future is changing before our eyes. We made the 1930s happen, but we can still make the 2030s much more bearable.<\/p>\n

Mark Gongloff is a Bloomberg Opinion editor and columnist covering climate change. \u00a92026 Bloomberg. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency.<\/em><\/p>\n

Read more Harriette Cole: I\u2019ve always gotten what I wanted, until now. How do I recover?<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

El Ni\u00f1o combined with extreme drought threatens to bring immense Northern Plains crop failures<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":4255,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4256","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-opinion"],"yoast_head":"\nGongloff: The US is getting a disaster salad with Dust Bowl dressing - Next City Digest<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/nextcitydigest.com\/?p=4256\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Gongloff: The US is getting a disaster salad with Dust Bowl dressing - Next City Digest\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"El Ni\u00f1o combined with extreme drought threatens to bring immense Northern Plains crop failures\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/nextcitydigest.com\/?p=4256\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Next City Digest\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2026-07-11T10:37:10+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"admin\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"admin\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"6 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\\\/\\\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"Article\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/nextcitydigest.com\\\/?p=4256#article\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/nextcitydigest.com\\\/?p=4256\"},\"author\":{\"name\":\"admin\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/nextcitydigest.com\\\/#\\\/schema\\\/person\\\/13065d40d633843429ac57d4e5c06f9b\"},\"headline\":\"Gongloff: The US is getting a disaster salad with Dust Bowl dressing\",\"datePublished\":\"2026-07-11T10:37:10+00:00\",\"mainEntityOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/nextcitydigest.com\\\/?p=4256\"},\"wordCount\":1144,\"commentCount\":0,\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/nextcitydigest.com\\\/?p=4256#primaryimage\"},\"thumbnailUrl\":\"https:\\\/\\\/nextcitydigest.com\\\/wp-content\\\/uploads\\\/2026\\\/07\\\/8f63b5d206ed447d8aba8d9e5c6d875e.webp\",\"articleSection\":[\"Opinion\"],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"CommentAction\",\"name\":\"Comment\",\"target\":[\"https:\\\/\\\/nextcitydigest.com\\\/?p=4256#respond\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/nextcitydigest.com\\\/?p=4256\",\"url\":\"https:\\\/\\\/nextcitydigest.com\\\/?p=4256\",\"name\":\"Gongloff: The US is getting a disaster salad with Dust Bowl dressing - 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