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Australia is a dry and occasionally quite windy continent, and has suffered greatly from European colonization. Overgrazing by sheep, and other agricultural practices, when coupled with draught and high winds, can generate huge dust storms. The biggest such storm in 70 years occurred when I was staying at Fowlers Gap station in far northwestern New South Wales. The evening it arrived, I took photos of what I initially thought was a thunderstorm -- before realizing that thunderclouds are not usually yellowish and that what I saw rising from the ground most likely wasn't rain. The next day the wind howled and the sky turned orange at midday (photos below) before it really got nasty: literally was as dark as night by about 3 in the afternoon. We had a huge cleanup job the next day. In places, about 10 cm of topsoil had disappeared, and a few sheep had to be put down because they had accumulated so much sand in their fleeces that they could not stand up. This storm moved to the east, shutting down the Sydney Airport for half a day and darkening skies all along Australia's east coast. |
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