For the past few days all of our daily record highs were set in the 1930s. One viewer questioned the comparison of that summer to our current one with an ongoing drought. Today’s record was 106 set in 1930. Obviously, most of us weren’t around during the “Dirty 30s” named for the numerous dust storms so I turned to the internet for info. I found a lot of info on http://www.ccccok.org/museum/dustbowl.html. I looked for information about that winter and hurricane season and what caused the Dust Bowl. It was the same time as The Great Depression and an extreme drought which was further enhanced by poor agriculture practices causing one of the worst disasters in history. The low level jet stream weakened, carrying less moisture, and shifted further south. This may have been caused by La Nina in the Pacific. The Great Plains land dried up and dust storms blew across the U.S. I didn’t find much info about the winter of that year but the hurricane season only had two storms develop in the Atlantic basin. One stayed in the Atlantic and the other went to Florida.
Right now we are in a neutral global pattern and developing an El Nino. What’s causing our drought now is a strong area of high pressure that hasn’t moved all month. We don’t expect the much in the way of rain next week but we are hoping this pattern breaks in early July. We can’t compare the two because of different global patterns and atmospheric set ups. Hopefully, we don’t develop a drought as bad as the 30s.