Austrailian Dust Storm

[Liberater444 11]

I was perusing the internet, and i saw on wikipedia's headlines was a major duststorm in Australia. Apparenty, it is the worst one in 70 years, and covered Canberra, Sydney, among other cities and states, in red dust. Here is the link.

Some Pics:

[Tropod 144]

Yep, lots of fun this was. People were being advised to stay indoors. Especially the elderly and asthmatics. It went as quick as it came. Quite amazing though really.

[VazFox 48]

Yeah, i saw a youtube video of this, taken in Broken Hill, NSW got very dark... looked very weird...

[Odainsaker 2,135]

It's not dust...it's the radioactive fallout cloud finally reaching the last surviving enclave of Australia. Get out your Mad Max costumes and barbarian motorcycles! Thunderdome! Thunderdome!

[Meg 368]

Tropod!   Good to see you. 

I saw pictures of the dust cloud on TV.  They had some ground level shots including one that was basically "can you see the opera house in there?"   They had some satellite photos of the dust blowing over.

It can't be good for this much stuff to be blown off of the land into the sea.

[maikeli.1 12]

The mountains in Brisbane could not be seen from my house also on the news Brisbane looked like doomsday hit the sky was red on the other hand heres some pictures of brisbane in the dust storm

[parrotti 11]

its looks like mars

[Muck308 55]

Yeah I heard it was heading towards Brisbane. What course did it take? Straight up the coast? If so that's a huge percentage of the Australian population experiencing the storm. Sydney, Newcastle, and Brisbane? Not to mention those in between.

I bet there were a lot of great photo ops though. And busy car washes afterward.

[bestacorn4ever 0]

Originally posted by: Muck308

Yeah I heard it was heading towards Brisbane. What course did it take? Straight up the coast? If so that's a huge percentage of the Australian population experiencing the storm. Sydney, Newcastle, and Brisbane? Not to mention those in between.

quote>

dont forget canberra, we got it here as well, the day before sydney got it,

i always just read on the news that it remenents of it have blown accross to New Zealand;

http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2009/09/25/2696441.htm

[andhow 0]

I live 40km from Sydney city and woke to find the whole house bathed in an orange glow. At first I panicked thinking it was a bushfire! It was the most amazing sight ever, we couldn't see more than 10m before the combination of the glow of the rising sun (it was about 6am), the dust and morning low cloud ( we live on top of a plateau) obscured everything, so we were completely enveloped in orange light. In fact it was as if the air itself was coloured rather just just the light. Alas, I had no camera available. We're still wiping surfaces and floors to get rid of the fine layer of dust that eaked in every open door and window, even some closed ones! Still worth the hassle to experience the effect - quite dramatic!

[astronelson 339]

Yes, there was much cleaning to be done. And there's another one on the way now.

[sneakeypete 16]

We've cleaned up already, took ages.

Also, if you want to get an idea of the scale of this storm, check out that satalite image on wikipedia. Basically, the storm moved foward in a front, that streached about half the country.

[Easy Bakes 253]

Originally posted by: Meg

Tropod!   Good to see you. 

I saw pictures of the dust cloud on TV.  They had some ground level shots including one that was basically "can you see the opera house in there?"   They had some satellite photos of the dust blowing over.

It can't be good for this much stuff to be blown off of the land into the sea.quote>

Years and years of drought  didnt help either.

[sneakeypete 16]

Supposedly a lot of it was actually sediement blown off lake eyre. Basically, we had a really, really big wet over central and northern QLD in the beggining of the year, and the water had been slowly making its way downstream to the lake. It'd finally dried up recently, leaving all the sediment that it took with it behind. and of course, the wind blew it all up.

[duack 14]

Damn. I woke up at 11 oclock that morning so i missed all the red haze . but still it was pretty cool!

So will there be another one in about 70 years?

[Tropod 144]

Well, we're getting another right now as I type, 7:30pm local AEST. Our place backs onto bushland in Brisbane, and there's another wave of a dust storm/cloud coming through.

[Asheroo 53]

Indeed Tropod. The view down my street and out the back looking across to Wishart has poor visibility. Can only just see the lights 1km away. Looks like we've got some more cleaning up to do. Look on the bright side, it creates more jobs for car and window washers, something the Rudd government likes.

[sneakeypete 16]

Wait.. how can you tell? its pretty dark right here now, i can't tell by just looking outside.

Oh well, guess we'll have to have the windows closed all night,, the house will be stuffy as.

Originally posted by: ASheroo

Indeed Tropod. The view down my street and out the back looking across to Wishart has poor visibility. Can only just see the lights 1km away. Looks like we've got some more cleaning up to do. Look on the bright side, it creates more jobs for car and window washers, something the Rudd government likes.quote>

Ahh, get out of my suburb mate! Guess i should go look outside though.

edit: ok, so i decided to look outside towards some lights this time (why i didn't do that before i don't know), and yeah, its dusty alright, bot as bad as the last one i hope. Guess i'll have something to spend sunday doing now.

[kellydale2003 2,276]

So what's a dust/sand storm like? Is it like tiny pieces of sand flying everywhere and hitting everything? (like minor small hail?). Is it hard to breathe? I've never been in one of these before.

[sneakeypete 16]

Originally posted by: kellydale2003

So what's a dust/sand storm like? Is it like tiny pieces of sand flying everywhere and hitting everything? (like minor small hail?). Is it hard to breathe? I've never been in one of these before.quote>

Well, for starters, i think its a good idea to make a distinction between a dust storm and a sandstorm. By the time it got to Brisbane it was mostly very very fine dust left in the air. Combined with the fact that the wind at ground level was not gale force, there was no flying particles etc. There wasn't a  "moving wall of dust" or anything like that that sweapt over. It just progressed from "kind of hazy" to "really dusty" in 5-10 minutes During the storm i had licked my lips. a few minutes later i licked them again and tasted a little bit of dirt. (and then dried them off so it wouldn't happen again).

If you had any prexisting breathing problems or alergies i imagine that the storm could pose problems for you, however, for me i could easily walk to the bus stop, and then to the car without anything abnormal.

Now, a dust/sandstorm out in the desert where they actually start from is a completely different story but i've never been in one. There was a short segment on the news about a guy out by the SA/QLD/NSW tri border meeting point who was in it though, and he rolled his car on a sanddune due to poor visability. He said that being outside in it was like having your skin slowly torn off by all the flying sand. He was worried that his car would be burried by the shifting sand (as there were dunes there as far as i know), so he sent out a distress call. It took the cop who responded 10 hours to make a journey that would usually only take an hour or two on a good day, he said that visibility was so bad that he couldn't really see past his bonnet at some points.

I would, however, imagine that all of the sand particles would be dropped pretty quickly, so you'd only get that if you were actually in a desert (just like what happens on beaches sometimes when there's string wind. sand will blow around and sting at your ankles, but it won't start forming a cloud).

[Asheroo 53]

I'm not in your suburb sneakeypete, but I am looking towards your suburb. I'll give you a clue, I can see the Anglican church from my house, looking to the SE from my house. Though, obviously it's night, so I can't see it, and with the dust storm, I can only just see the lights ontop of the hill where Mt Gravatt-Capalaba Road runs along.

 

EDIT: Ok, now it's starting to sound a little more like doomsday. Someone has set off some fireworks, strange for this weather.:S

[Tropod 144]

Originally posted by: kellydale2003

So what's a dust/sand storm like? Is it like tiny pieces of sand flying everywhere and hitting everything? (like minor small hail?). Is it hard to breathe? I've never been in one of these before.quote>

No sand, just dust/dirt in the air.

It's certainly not pleasant, I can say that much. One could be forgiven for thinking there was/is a firestorm happening. Even though this is quite the amazement, it is very noticeable. I can feel and smell the dust/dirt in the air indoors, and we have all the windows and doors closed and the fans on. It's 10:45pm local AEST and it's still present.

Can really appreciate now why authorities have been telling people (elderly/asthmatics) etc to stay inside. People are going to have to wash everything all over again

[kellydale2003 2,276]

Omg that's horrible, Yeah I saw on TV today a video of a guy driving in a sandstorm on the highway and he's driving way to fast for the conditions (and he's holding the camera) and out of nowhere there's a bridge full of cars smashed up in the same spot. Funny how we recorded the last seconds before joining the pile-up. I would show you that video If I knew where it was.

But wow, that's crazy. And is it hot during the storm? Or does the sand/dust keep most of the heat out?

[Shadow Assassin 336]

But wow, that's crazy. And is it hot during the storm? Or does the sand/dust keep most of the heat out?quote>

It depends on the weather conditions of the day. It was quite windy that day, and it went EVERYWHERE.

I had one window open, and the entire room was covered in a fine orange dust - that's what I get for having a west-facing window open.