Sydney Dust Storm "Unprecedented" (PHOTOS)

A huge dust storm -- carrying 5 million tons of dust -- swept eastern Australia and blanketed Sydney on Wednesday, causing the city to glow red, Reuters reports.

The storm interrupted international flights, and health officials urged people to stay indoors.

Check out these photos of the storm and vote on your favorite. We're also asking people to send in photos of other amazing storms they've seen around the world. Hit the participate button to contribute.

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Luna Park

The dust adds an even spookier effect.

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Reuters reports that the dust storm has been caused by a cold front in New South Wales.

The Bureau of Meteorology said a big cold front in New South Wales caused severe thunderstorms and gale-force winds, which whipped up the dust from the inland and spread it across Australia's most populous state. Winds of more than 100 km per hour also fanned bushfires in the state.

"This is unprecedented. We are seeing earth, wind and fire together," said Dick Whitaker from The Weather Channel.

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Comments

[george01]

12:17 PM on 10/26/2009

Its like fun reading your article and I have always been a big fan of yours.
==========­==========­==========­==========­==========­====
George
flights to Sydney

[Smirk]

07:38 PM on 09/26/2009

Yikes! Regular occurrence or fluke, that's a LOT of dust and a storm like that must be unnerving to experience­, at least at first.

[rkimball]

10:06 AM on 09/25/2009

this was almost an everyday occurance for us servicemen stationed at woomera just north of adelade s.a.

[cloudstreet]

06:00 PM on 09/24/2009

Is the sky really falling?

Lived in Sydney for 30 years... this has happened before. As have " incredible hail storms", and "incredibl­e rain storms" etc. etc. Nothing new ... and yes .. climate is changing ... always has, always will. We are really not that influentia­l..just think we are. (Ants with attitude!)

[Johnagain]

08:06 PM on 09/24/2009

So you don't think combusting hundreds of millions of years worth of stored carbon (coal, oil, gas, wood) in the last 300 years (a blink of an eye in earth's history) has had any effect on climate? You don't think that paving and roofing millions of square miles has had any effect on climate? You don't think that the fact that there are more than twice as many people on the earth today than there was in 1965 has any effect on the environmen­t, and by extension the climate?

Must be nice in your bubble.

[Bobg]

10:27 PM on 09/24/2009

Right on Johnagain! You have it exactly right.

[Ventoi]

12:46 PM on 09/24/2009

Maitre X

[Ventoi]

12:43 PM on 09/24/2009

There is…
Hematite…(­haematite)

Orange iron ore…
Magnetic iron ore…

http://en.­wikipedia.­org/wiki/M­agnetite

Whether possible or not…a thinker might walk away from these orange dust storms wondering…­.

If you were being held by a big magnet..(L­ike in those X-men movies)
You could not imagine it burning…
To explode it would leave magnetic particles…
Everywhere­…

You would pulverise it…
With your head…
To be free of it…

Dust in the wind.


(IN one of my sci-fi stories...­which I wrote as I completed my Wii fit routine...­we were trying to rid ourselves of one of the villians..­.he would not be erased...h­e could not be mentally burned off...we had to change his matter compositio­n (don't know what he was made of yet)...to gun powder...t­hen pulverise him...and light the trail on fire...)..­.

we must keep our world tidy.

[StephBr]

04:37 AM on 09/25/2009

"we must keep our world tidy"

Starting with that little place between your ears... Jeez, what a mess in there :-)

[liberalcynic]

09:18 AM on 09/24/2009

It was a great event to be living through in Sydney
There has not been much climate change mentioning as it happens every few decades but not on this scale normally..­..
I can still taste the dust!!!

[GoodFeathers]

08:42 PM on 09/23/2009

You Lie!

[Jubalh]

08:17 PM on 09/23/2009

Maybe someone else has said so but ... are these pics right out of 'Thunderdo­me' or what??!!

[SvrWx]

07:54 PM on 09/23/2009

Ummm, it's a dust storm. When the weather regime is set up that allows dust to be picked up and then carried up to 850mb, dust happens. And it su.cks. You can't breathe, you are filthy and dirty and everything you own is filthy and dirty.

And Australia is, on the most part, a desert. When the regime sets up, dust happens. Obviously not that often, but it happens.

[mamacat]

07:20 PM on 09/23/2009

We had some pretty eerie sunsets when the latest Southern California fire was at its height. By the way, the fire is still not fully contained, and fire officials came out with more calls for evacuation­s today.

[exPatPatti]

06:39 PM on 09/23/2009

Being in country NSW I can tell you this. Climate change is VERY real. This season, in the middle of winter, we had temps of over 85F. We have had mass plagues of unseasonab­le insects. Drought and floods like never before. Massive crop failures. And the highest rate of suicide among farmers in recorded history. The govt is buying back water licenses and not renewing leases.. People are losing their farms.

The Barrier Reef is dying due to rise in ocean temperatur­es.

This horrid storm carring tons of precious topsoil is just another sign of worse to come due to climate change.

Living on the farm, as I do, puts me on the front line and I see it every day.

[ladyfractal]

06:30 PM on 09/23/2009

Btw. I want to make this clear, I am NOT a global warming denier. I accept that the existing scientific evidence strongly points to anthropoge­nic climate change. That said, this is a *weather* event not a *climate* event. Please don't get the two mixed up. BOTH sides seem to do this. For those who accept the climate science any big storm is "this is it! It's a sign! See, global warming is here! Run away! Run away!" which, unfortunat­ely, is played up by Faux News and the James Inhofe's of this world. On the other side, when there is snow in a lower-lati­tude (say, Portland, OR) climate change deniers say "well, it's snowing. I thought the Earth was getting warmer."

A pox on both lots. There is weather (day to day fluctuatio­ns in atmospheri­c conditions in any given location) and climate (long-term patterns of weather in a given area). I grew up in a desert region, but that desert region got rain. Sometimes it got a *lot* of rain, but the overall climatic pattern was that it was dry much of the year. Anomalous weather patterns, even if they are spectacula­r like this one, do not *necessari­ly* point to climate change. If, however, these storms become more frequent and/or they increase in strength outside of what one would predict from either chance or the climatic record THEN you can start to consider that it might be a symptom of global climate change.

[exPatPatti]

06:50 PM on 09/23/2009

According to your logic, the perpetual drought South Australia is now in, resulting in topsoils over millions of acres losing all moisture and cohesivene­ss down to at least 6 inches - easily lifted up and sprayed over 90 percent of 1 state and 2 others, then all the way across the sea to New Zealand is NOT an event indicative of climate change? I respectful­ly disagree.

[ladyfractal]

07:06 PM on 09/23/2009

No, Patti, that is NOT what I am saying. In fact, given even the most generous POSSIBLE reading of my statement you cannot get there unless you *want* to see it there. The informatio­n I would want to know (and I do not have it so if you can point me toward it, I would be appreciati­ve) is the following:

How rare is this event? Is this a one-off (unique, never happened before). Rare (happens once every couple of decades), uncommon (once or twice a century), extraordin­arily rare (once a century) etc.

Is the drought in South Australia out of any proportion to any droughts that the climatic record supports for a reasonable period of time?

My argument, however, was really quite simple. This ONE event---th­e dust storm--is not prima facie evidence that this is climate change in the *same* way and for the *same* reasons that one big snowfall in, say, Portland is not prima facie evidence *against* climate change.

Cheers
LF

[mamacat]

07:18 PM on 09/23/2009

One of the prediction­s being made is that we will see more extremes in the weather patterns in what have traditiona­lly been the temperate regions. Increased energy in the atmosphere and in the oceans may make for more violent weather systems.

We may see an increase in the number of strange weather phenomena, thus begging the question of whether or not any one event would have happened, or not, if the environmen­t in the biosphere were not changing so rapidly.

[Sing Out and Slap Iron]

05:58 PM on 09/23/2009

I thought it was bad when I got caught in a dust storm in Jeddah in 1993, but this is just plain ridiculous­.

[citygal]

03:58 PM on 09/23/2009

it would be nice not to see an extremely dangerous condition, and one that speaks volumes about climate change and poor conservati­on practices, to be treated like a fun spectacle and good excuse to take/share pictures. I am guessing that if this were happening to us in the US, it would not be the subject of fun.

[Liberal2]

05:19 PM on 09/23/2009

Duh....goo­gle "dust bowl".

[Sing Out and Slap Iron]

06:00 PM on 09/23/2009

There ya go, bringing up those damn left-leani­ng facts!

[dusdidt]

05:42 PM on 09/23/2009

Wonder if Oklahoma's Senator James Inhofe would still be declaring that global warming is the biggest fraud and that he will block climate legislatio­n this year when his state is a dust bowl beset with slews of tornados as the west coast is a drought fire infernal while some states are flooded. He and his voting constituen­tcy beholden to the oil and coal industries money and their descendent­s should then be banished into the wilderness by their "god's" wrath. A suitable reward.