Return of the Dust Bowl? What a strong El Niño may bring to US

• A strengthening El Niño could reshape U.S. drought patterns, potentially leading to persistent dryness in the Plains.
• Experts are concerned that a "Super El Niño" could emerge, raising the possibility of a "mini-Dust Bowl" scenario.
• El Niño typically shifts storm tracks, bringing wetter conditions to the southern U.S. but leaving northern areas drier.
• While a repeat of the 1930s Dust Bowl is unlikely due to modern farming practices, prolonged drought could still impact food production and water supplies.

A strengthening El Niño developing in the Pacific could reshape U.S. drought patterns over the next year — and lead to a potential for persistent, multi-year dryness across parts of the Plains already sliding deeper into drought.

There is growing concern among long-range meteorologists that a “Super El Niño” could emerge later this year, with atmospheric impacts potentially stretching into 2027. While El Niño is often associated with wetter conditions across parts of the southern U.S., it can also shift storm tracks in ways that leave the northern tier — including portions of the Plains — drier than normal.

That pattern stands out because much of the central U.S. is already drying out ahead of peak El Niño development. Nebraska, Oklahoma, Colorado and Wyoming have each gone from essentially no extreme drought in mid-June 2025 to at least 30% of their area in extreme drought this summer.

And even though El Niño could transition back to neutral later this year, some experts are increasingly focused on what could follow, warning that drought conditions in the Plains could persist for years after the pattern breaks down — and the possibility of a “mini Dust Bowl” scenario.

"If the long-term drought is as bad as it could be, and you are starting off already with severe drought, this raises the real possibility of a ‘mini-Dust Bowl," said AccuWeather Founder and Executive Chair Joel N. Myers. "Soybeans will be stressed further in the months and years ahead, and yields on some of these crops will be reduced in parts of the country. If that happens, it will have a negative impact on food production, leading to price inflation. Furthermore, water supplies will be harmed, as well."

Why El Niño complicates the drought picture

El Niño is a climate pattern marked by warmer-than-average sea surface temperatures in the central and eastern tropical Pacific Ocean. That ocean warming alters where thunderstorm activity concentrates near the equator, which in turn shifts the position of the jet stream — the fast-moving river of air that steers storms across North America.

Those changes ripple into the U.S. weather pattern. During El Niño, the subtropical jet stream is often strengthened and shifted farther south, which can increase storm frequency and rainfall across parts of the southern tier of the United States. At the same time, that same shift can divert storm tracks away from portions of the northern U.S. and parts of the Plains, leaving those areas more vulnerable to persistent dryness.

That uneven distribution matters most when drought is already in place.

Some long-range forecasters say the concern is not just the immediate El Niño-driven pattern, but how it interacts with existing dry soils across the Plains — especially if drought conditions deepen before peak El Niño impacts arrive.

In past strong El Niño events, including 1982–83 and 1997–98, portions of the Plains experienced drought that either persisted or redeveloped in the years that followed, underscoring how long-term moisture patterns can lag behind tropical Pacific changes.

When was the Dust Bowl and how long was it?

The Dust Bowl refers to a prolonged and devastating period of drought and dust storms that gripped the U.S. Plains during the 1930s, beginning around 1931 and lasting through much of the decade. Its most intense years stretched from roughly 1934 to 1939, when prolonged heat, failed rains and relentless winds stripped topsoil from farms across Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas, Colorado and New Mexico.

It is widely regarded as one of the most harrowing weather disasters in modern U.S. history — a defining era in which entire communities were battered by “black blizzards” of dust that turned daylight dark and buried farmland under drifting soil.

The Dust Bowl also became deeply embedded in American cultural memory, most famously through John Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath and other works that chronicled the mass migration and economic hardship it helped trigger.

The worst of the drought eventually eased by the end of the 1930s as rainfall patterns shifted and conservation practices expanded, but its legacy remains a benchmark for prolonged, multi-year drought and environmental collapse across the Plains.

What’s changed since the Dust Bowl of the 1930s

Meteorologists caution against direct comparisons to the 1930s Dust Bowl. But the physical feedbacks that drove that era — dry soils, reduced evaporation and suppressed rainfall potential — still exist in modern drought regimes, even if land management is significantly different today.

That is where the “mini-Dust Bowl” language has emerged in some research discussions. While it may not be a repeat disaster, prolonged drought cycles could evolve under similar atmospheric conditions.

"Even after El Nino ends, it could be around winter or later, it could be two to three years where it might be drier in parts of the Plains from Texas to the Dakotas," warned AccuWeather meteorologist Peyton Simmers.

Despite growing concerns about drought risk tied to a strengthening El Niño, a true repeat of the 1930s Dust Bowl is unlikely today — largely because the land itself is managed very differently than it was a century ago, according to the Yale School of the Environment.

The original Dust Bowl was not driven by drought alone but by the combination of extreme dryness and widespread land disturbance. During the early 20th century, large portions of the Southern Plains were converted from native prairie into row crops, especially wheat, during wetter years in the 1910s and 1920s. When drought arrived, much of that landscape was left with little to no natural vegetation to hold the soil in place.

Without deep-rooted prairie grasses anchoring the ground, winds were able to lift exposed topsoil across large parts of the Plains.

"We’ve had bad droughts in the Central Plains since the Dust Bowl, but we haven’t had the same level of land degradation and dust storm activity,” Ben Cook, a climate scientist at the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies, told Yale Environment 360 in 2021. “And part of the reason for that is because our land use practices have changed.”

Widespread adoption of conservation practices — including no-till and reduced-till farming, crop rotation, cover crops and federal soil conservation programs — helps keep soil anchored even during dry periods. In many areas, crop residue is left on fields after harvest, and root systems remain in place year-round, reducing the risk of large-scale wind erosion.

Land use is also more regulated and fragmented than in the 1930s, with programs that retire highly erodible land and encourage conservation buffers in vulnerable areas. While drought can still stress crops and water supplies, widespread exposure of bare soil on a multistate scale is far less likely today.

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Brandi D. Addison covers weather across the United States as the Weather Connect Reporter for the USA TODAY Network. She can be reached at [email protected]. Find her on Facebook here.