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CHAOTIC
WEATHER
Returnof the dustbowl?
o.
.
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I
s
ANOT H ER
disastrous
weat her cycle about to
begin?
Devastating drought in North
America's breadbasket. Millions
threatened with starvation by pro–
tracted drought in Africa. Austra–
lia battered alternately by drought
and floods. Europe suffers record
heat.
You thought these stories were of
1983? No, these weather disasters
describe the weather that ravaged
nations in the 1930s.
Dust Bowl Again?
lt
is not without significance that the
founding year of this magazine,
1934, was one of the worst years of
the Amer ican dust bowl in the
1930s. T hat year God's message in
print began to be proclaimed
announcing startling events, prophe–
sied in your Bible, to shake the
United States, Britain and other
nations.
The World Almanac and Book of
Facts
of 1935 described 1934's upset
weather like this:
"Drought and dust storms in the
Mid-West are destroying winter
wheat at the rate of 1,000,000
bushels a day.... Corn planting is
held back.... Cattle are suffering. It
is estimated 300 million tons of top–
soil were blown away. It darkened
the air to the Atlantic seaboard."
That same year, 65 million Chi–
nese in 14 provinces of China were
forced to become refugees in a
national calamity of civil wars, fam–
ines, droughts and floods. Two thirds
of the Chinese nation was ultimately
affected by weather disasters.
Heavy rains drowned hundreds
February 1984
by
Donald D. Schroeder
in Japan, Korea and Manchuria in
1934. Hurricane winds also swept
the central island of Japan leaving
more than 4,000 dead, 200 ,000
homeless and US$90 million worth
of damage.
Today, we again are witnessing
devastating patterns of weather–
particularly prolonged periods of
heat, drought or driving rains–
over vast areas of the globe.
ln late summer of
1983, the United States
Department of Agricul–
ture announced that the
yield of the U .S . corn
crop would be cut more
than 40 percent because
of a surprise period of
severe drought. Soybean
production was hurt.
The Midwest drought
was a surprise because a
wet spring delayed much
crop planting. l f the U.S.
d rought persists again
this year, the great grain
reserves of the United
States will plummet, food
prices will soar and scores
of nations dependent on
North America's r ela–
tively cheap and abundant
food will be shaken.
has spread into the prime croplands
of South Africa and Zimbabwe
(formerly Rhodesia), cutting food
exports from these major suppliers
to other food-short African nations.
Australians only now are beginning
to recover from the severe damages
of record droughts and rains.
Unseen Dimension
Through the years meteorologists
Gone are the days
when people could simply
migrate away from
The devastation of the U.S. dust bowl in the 1
930s
(top) was repeated in recent decades in Australia.
drought and famine. What will
nations do i f severe weather
destroys crop surpluses in major
food exporting regions- in North
America, Australia, Argentina or
parts of Europe?
Vast areas of the continent of
Africa are now apparently locked in
a pattern of prolonged and spread–
ing drought. Drought devastation
have gained better understanding
of the physical factors involved in
producing weather patterns. But
they confess they don't know
why
major global-impacting weatber
forces, such as high altitude jet
streams or powerful ocean currents,
shift as they do.
The Bible makes plain who is in
control of the weather! "Fire and
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