Thursday, April 16, 2009

Sandstorm

A couple of night ago while driving home we were caught in a fairly violent sandstorm. It reminded me of snowstorms in the US northeast of my childhood. At times we could drive only 40 kph because of the low visibility.
This is what it looks like if you are lucky enough to be flying above it (photographer - Yonatan Zur):


And this is what it looks like if your in it:


(photographer - Herb Benkel)

Very nasty it gets in your eyes, nose, mouth, ears and even hair. Yuch.





2 comments:

Jaujau said...

When I was 17, Mount St. Helen's errupted not 70 miles to the southwest of us. We were directly in its path, and the first large city to be hit with a wall of ash so thick that by 12 pm, it was darker than midnight, and it stayed that way until the following morning. We watch the erruption happen from our house. And watching the slate colored, slow moving cloud creeping over the hills and mountains was eerie. Within the hot ash cloud were bolts of lightning and thunderclaps. Strange, since there was no rain. At first, everyone wanted to panic and the 911 lines were overloaded, but a really interesting thing happened when the Governer of Washington State, a dowdy frump of a woman got on television and reassured us that volcanic ash wasn't going to kill anyone not immediately in the wake of the explosion. And she told the press to quit fearmongering, because of the wild rumors that ash had high contents of radioactive material in it...it didn't. She should know...she was a nuclear scientist. Watching her put Phil Donahue down like the overwrought emotionally unstable ignoramus he was and is...one of the few times I watched his wretched show.

Lioness said...

I once slept outside in the Saharah. No sandstorm but I learnt there is far too much sand in this world, and I alone accumulated a vast amound of it. Also, hullo severe blepharitis!

Ohh, you can actually see it here and THAT was before the desert-spent night: http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2199/2373082203_0ede136db9_o.jpg

My eyes and sand - it's an obscene combination.

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