Tuesday afternoon and evening, May 22, 2002, the combination of high winds and severe drought conditions created the first dust storm of the year in this part of the Canadian praries. The Saskatoon Star Pheonix featured a picture of the downtown core being enveloped by a large dust cloud. The caption on the photograph reads 'A cyclist looks eastward on 20th street to see Saskatoon's downtown disappear in dust that enfulfed the city late Tuesday afternoon.' This morning the winds have died down a little, but the city is still wrapped in a haze and a film of dust coats automobiles. An elderly gentelman said, 'I lived through the dirty thirties once and I shouldn't have to do it again.' The Saskatoon dust storm follows on the heels of a cloud of smoke which enveloped the city of Edmonton. According to the story as reported by the CBC, 200 Forest and grass fires are burning in the `Canadian west, due to a combination of drought and high winds...Tuesday May 21 -> CBC : Smoke cloud covers Edmonton, a city on the Canadian praries in the province of Alberta to the West of Saskatchewan...The fields in Saskatchewan are dried and yellow brown and the other weekend I watched as men walked accross bone dry soil with clouds of dust being raised by each foot fall, and I knew at the time that great dust storms were inevitable.

The drought conditions have also spread in the western parts of the American plains. According to an AP wire story : Western Kansas Farmers Culling Cattle Herds, Abandoning Wheat Acres By Roxana Hegeman Associated Press Writer Published: May 13, 2002 SYRACUSE, Kan. (AP) -
The (winter wheat) plants should be knee-high and so thick he can't see the ground. But these barely outstrip the top of his dusty boots as he strides through the sickly stand. Large brown patches of dirt show where plants died and blew away, or seed never sprouted at all....As Keller waits, he scratches a long furrow in the loose soil with his boot before hitting hardpan. Keller unsheathes a pair of pliers and inserts the handle in a half-inch fissure, prying loose clods of dirt as hard as rock. Farther down the field, he stops and easily pulls out a wheat plant with two fingers. Then another. And another. In far western Kansas, where no substantial rain has fallen since August, dry conditions are approaching Dust Bowl levels. The region is so parched that even some irrigated fields have been lost. The drought is affecting cattlemen, too, as pastures become so dry that they can't turn their livestock out. At the local auction yard, owner Steve Schneider is having a busy day with his dairy cattle auction and bracing for a beef auction the next day expected to be busier than normal. The number of cattle running through his sales rings are up 20 to 30 percent over a year ago. "Some are liquidating their herds, some are culling a few and trying to hold on," he says. "But the dry feed is running out."


In Western Canada the situation is just as bad. The River running through my city consists of mud islands with water puddles. The low river conditions were caused by a winter drought in the Rockies, feeding rivers which flow into the Mississippi, however due to the constant flooding in the Central states over the winter and throughout the spring, it is unlikely that the flow of the Mississippi will be affected by the loss of Canadian water which usually flows from the Rockies...



The Severe Weather map on the Wunderground site shows in blue, the high wind warnings for the drought stricken areas, raising the possibility of more dust storms in the United States, as well. The Green on the right shows the areas that were flooded all winter with the flooding following the Mississippi. The West Nile virus has reached this flooded area and in an ominous example of synchronicity the area was flooded all winter and spring, raising the possibility of the threat of West Nile Virus outbreaks as mosquitoe breeding season begins. Between drought, flooding, and the West Nile Virus, it looks bad year for farmers and for the MidWest of both Canada and the United States...

If anyone has infornation on dust storms, and if it is under-reported or unreported on national media, such as CNN, please make sure to report here on Indy sites...This looks like one of the major stories of the year developing here, but because it might scare Wall Street, (with the allusions to the dirty thirities) the possibility exists that such national outlets as CNN might want to avoid reporting the story until forced to do so...I for one want to know about every single dust storm and about the fire situation, etc...