Dust Bowl Peaks: 109F Heat Wave Scorches Chicago

Temperatures hit 109 degrees Fahrenheit in parts of the Midwest while crops across the Great Plains were already dead from three years of drought, and the combined catastrophe killed an estimated 3,500 Americans in a single week. The heat wave of July 1935 struck a population that had no air conditioning, no public cooling centers, and no warning system capable of alerting vulnerable people before the worst temperatures arrived. The Dust Bowl had been devastating Plains agriculture since 1932, when severe drought combined with decades of destructive farming practices to strip the topsoil from millions of acres across Kansas, Oklahoma, Texas, and neighboring states. Massive dust storms, some carrying 300,000 tons of soil, had already displaced hundreds of thousands of families. The heat wave compounded the disaster, killing livestock that had survived the drought and destroying whatever crops remained. Chicago suffered particularly badly. Temperatures stayed above 100 degrees for multiple consecutive days, and overnight lows barely dropped below 80, giving residents no relief. Hospitals overflowed with heat stroke victims. Families dragged mattresses onto fire escapes and rooftops to sleep, and thousands camped along the Lake Michigan shoreline. The city morgue ran out of space, and authorities commandeered warehouses to hold the dead. The toll across the city exceeded 700 in a single week. Congress responded with emergency relief appropriations, and the Roosevelt administration accelerated programs through the Soil Conservation Service to teach farmers erosion-prevention techniques including contour plowing, terracing, and crop rotation. The Civilian Conservation Corps planted shelter belts of trees across the Plains to break the wind. These measures, combined with the return of rain in the late 1930s, gradually stabilized the region. The 1935 heat wave remains one of the deadliest weather events in American history, though it is largely forgotten beside the more photogenic dust storms.