Dust storm

[celticdragonfly]

For anyone who hears me bitching about this afternoon's weather - telophase found this photo of the Dallas skyline from the Fort Worth Star-Telegram website:



In Fort Worth late this afternoon while selenite and I were out doing errands, it was actually a bit worse than this. I've never seen the sky here that color before. Strong winds, and dust storm. I was hacking and sneezing a lot.

selenite said with all the rain we've had recently, he was surprised it was that bad. I said it just meant that without that rain it would have been much worse - with fires. (As it is, I hope we don't get any fires)

Comments

[tmc4242.livejournal.com]

Keep in mind we're still more than 20 inches of rain behind normal right now. Things are nice and green, so the fire danger is lessened for now, but the soil is still too dry.

Even worse, I think most of the dust we get here in North Texas actually blows in from west and southwest Texas. It's ALWAYS dry out there. So the dust is easy to come by. And you know, that picture shows visibility of at least 5 miles. It gets a lot worse sometimes. Very annoying when it does too.

This front really seems to have brought a lot of allergens with it. I don't know if it's just the dust or if there's other stuff mixed in with it too, but my allergies are NOT happy. Probably didn't help that I spent several hours outside today working on the truck.

[ewtikins.livejournal.com]

I remember some pretty bad dust storms, with fires, in the prairies when I was a teenager. Thankfully I'm not asthmatic so it didn't affect me too badly, but my eyes stung a lot. It's disturbing to see that much soil in the air, though. Is there tilling and sowing going on at this time of year? Don't people plant windbreak hedges at the edge of their properties any more? Soil erosion is scary stuff.

Fire is just another part of the natural cycle of things, of course, and if nobody does controlled burns then eventually there will be a dry year and you'll get grass fires (or indeed forest fires). You can choose when you have fire, but only to a point - "never" is not on the list of options.

[celticdragonfly.livejournal.com]

Is there tilling and sowing going on at this time of year?

The problem now is that most of those fields are getting bulldozing in preparation to become more subdivisions. And no, those don't have windbreak hedges.