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Although it is a growing area of investigation in the Global Dust Belt, few prior population-level studies have evaluated human health associations of windblown dust in North America. We investigated whether acute, short-term dust exposures and thunderstorm exposures in Lubbock, Texas (a medium-sized, dust-prone city in the southern Great Plains of the USA) are associated with significant increases in hospitalizations on the day of the exposure and up to seven days afterwards. Using a quasi-Poisson regression, it was found that relative risks of hospitalizations for multiple conditions were significantly positively associated with dust exposures and thunderstorm exposures between 2010 and 2014, with lag periods of up to 6 days after exposure. Consistent with prior studies of dust health effects in other cities, we found increased hospitalization risk for respiratory disease, asthma, ischemia, and cerebrovascular …