- a period, throughout the 1930s, when waves of severe drought and dust storms in the North American prairies occurred, having devastating consequences for the residents, livestock, and agriculture there: When the Dust Bowl began, the Great Depression was already underway—it was one disaster on top of another.
- the region that suffered from these waves of drought and dust storms, including the entire U.S. Midwest and, in Canada, the southern prairies of Alberta and Saskatchewan: Our Oklahoma panhandle was smack dab in the center of that heartless Dust Bowl.
- any similar dry region elsewhere: Where we see the tragic formation of dust bowls in Asia and Africa, overgrazing is believed to be the main culprit.
- a semiarid area in which the surface soil is exposed to wind erosion and dust storms occur
- the area of the south central US that became denuded of topsoil by wind erosion during the droughts of the mid-1930s
