Dust Storm......

September 23, 2009 I got up to commence my day and looked outside. The sky and areas all around home were filled with fog, it was everywhere. I commented to John that the fog was probably a result of the hot humid air from the previous day mixed with the cool evening air. As I walked down the staircase to my car it soon became evident that this was in fact dust and not fog; some sort of dust storm had blown in overnight. By the time I had driven out to the site the sun had begun to rise giving the entire atmosphere a surreal look that made the construction site appear more like Mars than the South Coast of NSW.
As the day progressed news reports of Sydney and the rest of NSW came in via the internet and radio. It appeared that a wall of red dust which comprised of top soil from farms out in central and western NSW, had been blown into a frenzied storm and covered the area of the east coast. It certainly gave off an eerie glow and by the end of the day authorities declared the air pollution to have reached the worst levels since 1939. So severe were the changes to the coast that NASA’s Terra satellite captured the entire incident. Stories have circulated of tourists standing to the side of Sydney Harbor and not being able to even see the Bridge. It caused travel chaos with air flights being grounded or redirected and many trains slowed to a snail’s pace. Traffic slowed down as well.
I think what fascinated J and I, more than anything, was the reddish/orange hue than blanketed everything, and we were viewing the event from Jervis Bay. I had never seen anythi8ng like it and many are convinced that it is just one of many climate changes, the result of mismanagement of the planet by us humans. Could be, maybe, possibly, but I am not convinced. Even with such a strange event as this dust storm, I still wonder whether climate change is a natural phenomenon.