Dust 2

[den]

Another dust storm has just ripped through town. Visibility is down to 200 metres. This one is so bad that THe other side of the street is noticably hazy. At least this one doesn't have a wind. It's just a big, gritty blanket, muffling sounds and giving the street lights a halo.

38C at 10pm. aagh

Comments

Okay, so I'm weird

[janetmiles.livejournal.com]

I remember dust storms from my childhood, and I miss them. (I grew up in Phoenix, Arizona, USA.) The frequency and intensity of the storms diminished as the area became more and more built-up. There was less land to produce dust, and less free airspace in which it could travel.

I miss tumbleweeds (http://www.abc.net.au/science/k2/trek/4wd/Over69.htm) and mile-a-minute (http://www.nps.gov/plants/alien/fact/pope1.htm), too, even though they were ecological nightmares. (Note: the mile-a-minute pages I can find claim that it grows in Pennsylvania, Maryland, Delaware, West Virginia, New York, Virginia, Ohio and Washington, D.C.; the stuff I remember was definitely in Arizona, so it's probably a different plant of the same name, but oh well.)