# I'm sitting in the middle of a dust storm

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/im-sitting-in-the-middle-of-a-dust-storm/398399>\
**Category:** Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share\
**Created:** [April 2, 2007, 8:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/im-sitting-in-the-middle-of-a-dust-storm/398399 "2007-04-02T08:16:29Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 3\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![jovan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/0ea827/32.png) [@jovan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jovan)\
**Post date:** [April 2, 2007, 8:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/im-sitting-in-the-middle-of-a-dust-storm/398399/1 "2007-04-02T08:16:29Z")

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I really am. The sky is golden white and the mountains are gone, as are some of the buildings I usually see from my office window. The air smells like a baseball field on a hot summer day, but it’s not particularly hot, or summer, and the only baseball is on television. A thin film stains the windows and my car, which I had lovingly driven through a car wash just recently.

I suppose most people don’t associate Japan with dust storms. I didn’t either, at least until last year, when we got it pretty badly. The sand, and this is what I find extraordinary, is blown all the way from the deserts of China. Here’s a beautiful and frightening [satellite picture](http://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E7%94%BB%E5%83%8F:S2001080041432.L1A_HJMS.ChinaDust_md.jpg) of the sands blowing over China, Korea and Japan.

While washing my car, again, is going to be a minor pain, I can’t help finding these golden hues slightly mystical. It looks as though the landscape out my window had been painted on paper a long time ago, and yellowed with age.

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**Author:** ![Sophistry\_and\_Illusion](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/b3f665/32.png) [@Sophistry\_and\_Illusion](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sophistry_and_Illusion)\
**Post date:** [April 2, 2007, 8:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/im-sitting-in-the-middle-of-a-dust-storm/398399/2 "2007-04-02T08:20:57Z")

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We get these in Lebanon. Dust blows up from North Africa. This phenomenon is usually accompanied by rain (for some reason I’m sure a meteorologist could explain–maybe water droplets in the clouds form around the dust particles?), so when it happens, it usually rains mud. Ewww.

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**Author:** ![Autolycus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/22d042/32.png) [@Autolycus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Autolycus)\
**Post date:** [April 2, 2007, 7:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/im-sitting-in-the-middle-of-a-dust-storm/398399/3 "2007-04-02T19:00:15Z")

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Holy shit that’s a lot of dust. がんばってね. hang in there.