Hurricanes, earthquakes and snowstorms seem to be the media darlings of weather disasters. That’s not to say the loss of life and property is not significant. But unless you catch the news at the right time, you may never hear about dust storms that blot out the sun, complicate breathing and cause accidents on the interstate.

To most people east of the Mississippi River, dust storms may seem like a relic of the 1930s, only mentioned in history books.

But the paradigm has shifted. In 2023, a deadly pileup on Interstate 55 in Illinois killed 8 people. Just a few months ago, the city of Chicago had to issue its first-ever dust storm warning after thunderstorms swept up loose, dry soil from farm country and hurled it into the atmosphere.

A new dataset unveiled in 2023 shows there were 232 deaths from windblown dust events from 2007- 2017. Most were in the western U.S., with smaller events popping up in Arkansas and Oklahoma to Missouri. If you add the fatal accident from 2023 in Illinois, that number jumps to 240 deaths.

The data was created by NOAA and several universities by merging dust fatality data from NOAA Storm Events Database and the Department of Transportation Fatality Analysis Reporting System (FARS). The data shows windblown dust causes a comparable life loss to that by hurricanes, thunderstorms and wildfires in most years.

I won’t say it’s not 100% not about the weather, but this is primarily about tillage.

Exposure to dust particles not only causes adverse health effects but also removes topsoil, damage crops, delays transportation, disrupts commerce and reduces the recreational value of landscapes.

 It doesn’t appear the problem is getting better, the researchers say. In the Great Plains, remote sensing, and particulate matter monitoring networks indicated a 5% yearly increase in dust loading from 2000-2018. It’s projected that dust activity will increase in the southern Great Plains from spring to fall in the coming decades. 

So how do we prevent these natural disasters from happening?

A story in the Capitol News in Illinois said Soil & Water Conservation Districts play a key role in evaluating farmland and working with farmers in hopes of improving land management. But funding from the state has been woefully inadequate, advocates say.

With SWCD’s mostly understaffed, that leaves the NRCS, which is celebrating its 90th birthday this year yet facing steep budget cuts — despite pressure created by climate change and natural disasters and the obvious need for conservation education. 

The National Weather Service in Lincoln, Ill., says strong winds, dry farm soil and large amounts of loose soil contribute to dust storms in the Upper Midwest. 

“Measuring the humidity level as a cause is not the issue. I won’t say it’s not 100% not about the weather, but this is primarily about tillage,” says Kevin Brooks, a commercial agriculture educator at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, who co-authored an article this spring about the solutions to these events.

Not surprisingly, they suggest no-till and strip-till be considered to improve soil productivity and reduce soil loss. Brooks is concerned with high-speed tillage equipment, which he says can help farmers prepare fields and plant earlier but potentially cause long-term issues. 

USDA Secretary Brooke Rollins says the administration is working to eliminate waste and make the agency more efficient and responsive. And there is hope in the tens of billions authorized for federal conservation programs in the One Big Beautiful Bill signed into law by President Trump.

Whatever the answer may be, we must get funding and technical assistance down to the local level with a minimum of bureaucratic inertia. There really is no excuse for a prominent agricultural state like Illinois to fund conservation districts at such a sorry level. 

And perhaps the NRCS will have to make some tough choices and direct more funding to areas that are most at risk and most valuable to farm production (read Congressional testimony from National Corn Grower Assn.’s Megan Dwyer about that issue). 

Our nation’s rich farm soils are worth protecting, and so are people’s lives. 

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