Great Plains Daily
Locust Attack:
As harvest time is coming close, many farmers are preparing for it, drying out wheat and preparing cattle to be transferred. Everything was going well for the farmers of the Great Plains, they might even have a good season. Then, a large dark cloud appeared, covering the sun, locusts. Some say you could hear them before you saw them, their loud screeches being heard. Something wrong was going to happen, we just didn’t know it yet.
Locust are covering everything, and consuming most of it too. Grass, trees, and crops for harvesting are all gone. Even people 's clothing and wooden tools are ruined. Farmers have had to tie the bottoms of their pants with rope to prevent getting bitten, all to try and save their
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The Great Plains climate made a huge difference of extreme and violent weather patterns. During the 1875 swarms, there were 3.5 trillion insects that covered almost the entire West. That was known as the “ Rocky Mountain Locust”. The locust swarms ruins the crops that were available, which lead to a terrible impediment or a restriction to settlement to the West. The locusts loved droughts. The dry conditions increased the nutritive values of vegetation due to the sugars and nutrients and reduced plant defense. But the drought triggered a massive outbreak of locusts that swept over an area, destroying most of the agricultural production and also bringing famine to the settlers. One eyewitness claimed that “the swarms of countless flying insects looked like dark storm clouds, and they glittered like snowflakes as they descended out of the sky”. That lead to many families having to abandon their homesteads and having no food left for themselves or their