A farmer and songs walking in the face of a dust storm in Cimarron County, Oklahoma during the Dust Bowl in 1936, via the Library of Congress courtesy of Wikimedia.

ALEXANDRIA, Va., Nov. 3 (UPI) -- With ongoing drought, the American West may be entering a period when it will see dust storms on a scale to dwarf the 1930s Dust Bowl era, researchers say.

As evidence they point to the giant dust storms known as haboobs that hit Arizona last summer, some more than a mile high and 100 miles wide, that knocked out electricity, created traffic jams and grounded airplanes.


With Arizona, California, Colorado, New Mexico, Oklahoma, Utah and other states experiencing drought conditions, researchers worry this might just be the start of a trend, an article in EARTH magazine reports.

The problem, researchers said, is that rising temperatures will contribute directly and indirectly to there being more dust in the air.

Persistent droughts, increasingly violent and variable weather patterns, and urban and suburban development will compound the problem, they said.

Over the next couple of decades, the American West could transition to another possibly long-duration Dust Bowl environment, they said.