DUST STORMS

Wairarapa Daily Times, 23 March 1935, Page 5

DUST STORMS

DAMAGE IN U.S.A. PALL OVER CITIES. Press Association Electric Telegraph—Conyrighv NEW YORK, Friday. Tlxe Middle West, which has been, id the grip of continuous dust storms since the beginning of tho week, today finds the situation exceptionally serious, as a repetition of last year’s drought is threatened. The dust storm area to-day extended from Texas to North and South Dakota, and from Oklahoma to Illinois, hundreds of thousands of acres of fine wheat lands being all but denuded, and other areas covered with a plant-stifling layer of dust.

Missouri housewives and municipalities could only await the settling of the dust before starting the seemingly hopeless task of cleaning homes and streets, none of which escaped. The dust was as fluid as the air which bore it. It penetrated everywhere, coated furniture and made breathing difficult. . '

In Western Kansas persons became lost in the continuous night. Schools were closed and highways blocked by tho Kansas Highway Patrol in order to avoid accidents. . Train schedules were interrupted, and aeroplanes kept on the ground. ■ - To-day the sun shone palely. Automobile headlights gleamed weirdly blue-green and all colours were intensified or distorted. Hundreds of hospital patients gulped air through wet cloths. Postmen went rounds with masks over their faces. Merchants stripped their display -windows, shut their doors, and swathed their counters with protective sheets. Housewives packed pictures,' linens, . and household furnishings away.

A farmer .wandered in circles and became lost in his 10-acre field until he fell exhausted. Neighbours found him. The dust brought a dull headache to many, and sleeping was difficult. Hundreds, wrapped in wet sheets, arose to find themselves like mummies in shrouds of mud. So dense was the dust pall at Chicago tQ-day that two aeroplanes hovered over the municipal airport for over an hour before the pilots found a rift through which to land.