During the night great winds brought dust from Southern Australia (and some say Western too) into New South Wales, covering - scientists say - an entire half of the state. I spoke to somebody who was up before dawn. He said as usual it was black night, then as the sun rose and lit up the dust the place was bright red, and as the sun rose higher the colour faded from orange to cream and finally the dust dissipated in the afternoon.

The dusty blanket that wrapped itself around Sydney this morning will fade over the course of this afternoon, but is on its way to Queensland, meteorologists say. Sydneysiders woke to a red dawn this morning as a thick dust storm caused havoc with transport and raised health fears. The size of the dust cloud surprised weather experts, who say it has covered half of NSW. "We see [dust storms] fairly regularly but what we don't see is dust this thick make it across to the coast. He also described how the dust cloud this morning had morphed from crimson red about dawn, through orange and yellow and into a paler grey late this morning. "With the low sun angle first thing in the morning, it's a bit like the angle of the sun at sunset ... you see a reddish tinge in the sky. "As it got higher in the sky the colour of the dust cloud changed. Now currently it's a grey pall that's over the city and that's because the sun is pretty well directly overhead." The dusty cloak would keep temperatures in the low 20s today, Mr Fisher said.

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And on to the scientific debate:

Global warming may not be the cause of the most severe dust storm to blight eastern Australia in 70 years, an Australian climate scientist says. "We've always had dust storms," Professor Tapper said. "There's plenty of evidence that, during the last ice age, there was lots of dust being blown around the southern hemisphere, a lot of it coming from Australia.

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And a select few photos:



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When I saw the orange glow out the window I got confused. Then I thought it could be that substance whose name escapes me from volcanic eruptions, but there is only one volcano around here (if it is true that it even is one) and it is extinct.

The natural light outside grew paler, and so something so weak as my phone shone brightly.
Most car's headlights turned into a bright bluey-white
The green light on all traffic lights turned aqua.

It was pretty cool, and it was sad to see it clear up. But the asthmatics, certain drivers, etc who were severely affected were obviously glad to see it go.

EDIT: And here's a photo of the storm in Brisbane, showing the cool aqua effect on the green light on traffic lights.

woah it looks like its a photo put on sephia, except its irl

awesome. ;O

10/10 nice photomanip

Haha, nice topic Saeb. Looks very cool. Would've loved to see that.

saw it on Sky News,

Someones got to clean that up

Is it dangerous? Looks like people are just ignoring it.

I'd rather have that over 0 visibility blizzard conditions.

Personally, it wasn't very dangerous or scary. But asthmatics had lots of problems, (very thin) sheets of dust landed on cars and stuff, visibility was pretty low, so ferries and stuff had to be put on standby...

In short, I didn't think it was dangerous, but apparently it was.

Lol Tyranno, I'm nowhere near good enough to make a photomanip that good. XD

The car washes are now at least 50% busier, and the woman on the video I saw said that we should get ready to clean it all up again because another dust storm is possible on the weekend.

START A CAR WASH NOW. Do that thing where you and your friends wear skimpy swimsuits and rub yourselves all over the cars and spray each other and everyone's soaking and shinyish and having a gay ol' time.

That's something you don't see everyday