celticdragonfly: (Default)
celticdragonfly ([personal profile] celticdragonfly) wrote2006-04-07 11:18 pm

Dust storm

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



In Fort Worth late this afternoon while [livejournal.com profile] 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.

[livejournal.com profile] 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)

[identity profile] ewtikins.livejournal.com 2006-04-08 09:27 am (UTC)(link)
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.

[identity profile] celticdragonfly.livejournal.com 2006-04-08 01:41 pm (UTC)(link)
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.