As the novel The Grapes of Wrath opens, what is devastating the land?John Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath

The weeds
grew darker green to protect themselves, and they did not spread any more.  The surface
of the earth crusted, a think hard crust, and as the sky became pale, so the earth
became pale, pink in the red country and white in the gray
country.

Drought has struck
the gray country of Oklahoma.  After the last of only light rains ends in early May, the
crops die and the earth cracks.  Across this parched ground animal hooves and wheels
traverse, breaking off some of the ground, which as dust blow into the air.  The wind
carries the dust until it fills the sky and spreads over the land.  The finest dust does
not settle onto the ground, but remains in the air. With the air filled with such dust,
the sun gives almost no light and people choke when they go outside.  The night is black
as no star can penetrate through the flying dust. Finally, the wind stops, and people
wait for the dust, so long transported through the air, to settle on their poor
crops.

The
women studied the men's faces secretly, for the corn could go, as long as something else
remained....After a while the faces of the watching men lost their bemused perplexity
and became hard and angry and resistant.  Then the women knew that they wer safe and
that there was no break....The men sat
still--thinking--figuring.

This phenomenon
came to be associated with the area which became known as the Dust Bowl.  Because of
severe drought and overfarming,the earth eroded.  Deep plowing of the rich topsoil of
the Great Plains had displaced the deep-rooted grasses that held the soil in place and
maintained the proper moisture level of the earth by trapping it even in times of
drought. Consequently, when the wind blew across the parched earth, it lifted the soil
that no onger had anything to hold it down.  Immense dust storms reached as far east as
New York.