Template:POTD/2025-11-18
The Dust Bowl was a period of severe dust storms that greatly damaged the ecology and agriculture of the American and Canadian prairies during the 1930s. Drought and a failure to apply dryland farming methods to prevent wind erosion caused the phenomenon. The drought came in three waves, 1934, 1936, and 1939–1940, but some regions of the high plains experienced drought conditions for as many as eight years. This black-and-white photograph, captioned "Broke, baby sick, and car trouble!", was taken by the American photographer Dorothea Lange in 1937 and depicts the jalopy of a Missouri migrant family of five on U.S. Route 99 near Tracy, California.Photograph credit: Dorothea Lange; restored by Adam Cuerden