Dust Storm Hits Central Eastern Australia
Posted by jennifer, September 23rd, 2009 - under News.
Tags: Drought, Rangelands
AS I look outside the sky is orange with dust. It irritates the nose and eyes, tickles the throats and sits heavily on the chest. And I am inside.
According to all the news reports visibility is 10 metres at Broken Hill to the far west and 100 metres in Sydney just 150 kilometres east of where I am. Australian Bureau of Meteorology spokeswoman Jane Golding says gale force winds have whipped up the dust from Australia’s drought-stricken inland and spread it east.
According to ‘Out of the West: A historical perspective of the Western Division of New South Wales’ by Dick Condon (Published by Rangeland Management Action Plan, 2002) there were severe dust storms in 1902-03, 1937-39, 1983, 1993, but the worst were during the period from 1943-1945. Some of these storms were often continuous day-in-day-out for several days.
Most of the dust storms that swept New South Wales during the 1943-45 period had their origins in South Australia with dust pick-up from treeless country. On reaching timber country to the east the wind velocity at ground level is reduced and dust trapped by the foliage of trees. As the storms passed eastward more and more dust was deposited.
Meteorological records report there were 34 dust storms at Wagga Wagga in central western New South Wales during the 1944-45 period. According to Dick Condon many of those resulted in blackouts or near blackouts when it would have been necessary to turn the lights on in order to see inside the average sized house.
Comparing the drought period 1982-83 with 1944-45 Mr Condon concludes that the storms were more severe during the earlier period because of the relative absence of dust raising winds and the much improved conditions of the landscape in the semi-arid and arid grazing country in western New South Wales during the latter part of the 20th century.
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Photograph of dust on my mother’s car parked in the driveway at Katoomba, Blue Mountains, September 23, 2009.
The following notes and quotes from ‘Out of the West – An Historical Perspective of The Western Division of New South Wales’, by Dick Condon. Published by the Rangeland Management Action Plan, 2002.
“One thing is certain, however, the millions of tonnes of soil particles, and attached plant nutrients, which were lifted into the atmosphere in the 1965-67, 1980-83 and 1991-94 droughts were minor in comparison with the amounts which would have left the Western Division, and other parts of arid and semi-arid Australia, in the period 1885 to 1945.” Condon pg. 221
“The present climate of New South Wales is very mild compared to the arid periods of the distant past. Wasson (1989) has presented evidence of the extremely long periods of intense aridity in the last 36,000 years – responsible for re-working the dune systems in Australia. These extreme arid periods occurred in cycles, often lasting for thousands of years, developed from earlier arid periods, as in tens of thousands of years, of extreme aridity. In more recent geological times, Mother Nature has arranged to clothe the dune systems with a protective and stabilising cover of ground vegetation as well as tree cover.” Condon pg. 221
“ Many fences were submerged by the drifting soil and stretches of railway line were buried. On 21st November [1902] so much soil was blown from the interior that Melbourne was drenched with dust and, in the afternoon, the sun was almost hidden by the dust in the air.” Blainey 1980 (pg. 206 Condon)
“In an extreme case near Menindee [in 1937] a new four-roomed house was never occupied. It became sanded up, and when the owner returned after a compulsory absence of six months, he had to enter it through the roof. It was however, found impracticable to remove the sand the house was abandoned.” Ratcliffe 1937 (pg. 212 Condon)
[In 1939] Albert Morris, an amateur nurseryman at one of the [Broken Hill] mines, was able to convince the manager of the Zinc Corporation that the best way of protecting the proposed new offices from being buried in drift sand was to establish a plantation of trees on their western side. (pg. 215, Condon)
Oh well, it’s an ill wind…….
I have just spent the day cleaning flyscreens and rehanging newly washed curtains for her indoors.
It was an overdue job…….apparently.
The recent dust storm in SE Australia is a symptom of how the complacent people on the east coast of Australia have neglected and abused rural Australia to the west of the range. Abandoned for drought aid, services, irrigation water, drought relief grazing on stock routes or high country left instead to incinerate in horror bushfires in man made fuel loads deprived services of grazing or cool fire, shonky environmental science to engineer cheap city water, smoke free tourism, do nothing public land mismanagement as rural communities are denied a political voice in dealing with particulate urban and industrial pollution chronically inhibiting rainfall 10-60% across SE Australia.
Mother nature sends city Australia a clear message of her disgust for their insensitive greed as rural Australia bleeds red dust! Decades of pleas ignored. Spin doctors blame “farmers management” for their plight not their making! Farmers wonder why bother trying to feed, clothe, house these people so far removed. Oh dear inconvenienced for “one day” when rural Australia languishes for decades from city incompetence and rort!
It seems we haven’t been able to pin down the source of the dust with any degree of certainty.
Typically, explanations about the origin often blame the agricultural practices of the reprobates over the border. :-)
Maybe Louis is onto something with his suggestion that these dust storms have a electrical component, and not just an electrostatic charge buildup from particle interaction with the atmosphere.
There is no mention of an organic component in the dust.
Pilots reported that the dust ceiling was at some thousands of metres.
Cairns residents reported a white rather than red or orange haze.
All those I have spoken to who experienced the dust described it as very fine with no apparent organic content.
Although the “lifted and lofted by strong winds from somewhere upwind” theory is very compelling from a conventional scientific point of view (and, as a bonus, gives us a great opportunity to indulge in much anthropic speculation :-) ), until we can definitely pinpoint the origin of the dust it would be unwise to exclude other possibilities as to the origin of the dust. The alternatives include the possibility of an extraterrestrial origin for the dust or the electrical energy contained in the dust.
Now before you choke on your porridge, remember that meteorites are constantly making earth their new home. So maybe, just maybe, we sometimes encounter extraterrestrial dust, dust that contains electrical energy, perhaps.
This extraterrestrial possibility can be easily falsified by identifying a terrestrial source consistent with the scale and composition of the dust.
Does this make me a denier? :-)
It seems the intellectual giants at QFF (Queensland Farmers Federation) have bought the “sediment into Lake Eyre” scam hook line and sinker. Never mind that the northern half of LE North is the only part that does not get a layer of salt that you cannot crack with a sledge hammer. And this northern half is only about 50km north to south but is supposedly responsible for a dust plume more than 1000km wide. And never mind that the isobars (showing wind direction) on 23/09/09 were running parallel, not splayed, so any dust from there would have extended in a long thin band of the same width in the same way that smoke from large fires do.
But that won’t deter the sultans of sleaze who will run with just about any crock of bull$hit that sounds plausible to the dumbest decile of the bimbosphere.
According to this report, electricity plays a major part in dust storms.
Dust Storms Are Electric
Larry O’Hanlon, Discovery News
Aug. 17, 2006 — It’s not just wind that raises sands and dust devils, say physicists, powerful electrical fields created by wind, sand and dust also levitate more of the nose-tingling stuff into the air…
… More than 100,000 volts per yard of natural, so called “static” electricity have been measured in desert dust storms and the mini-tornado-like dust devils…
http://dsc.discovery.com/news/2006/08/17/dust_pla.html?category=earth&guid=20060817101500
I like the bit where he assures us that the electricity is “natural”. :-)
I guess it one of those chicken and egg situations. Did the electrical energy initiate the motion or is it a product of the wind induced motion?
100,000 volts/m2 (roughly) seems rather a lot of electrons to gain or lose from just swishing around in a dust devil.
Greetings Jennifer, I really enjoyed reading your comments on the massive dust storm that hit your part of Australia recently. These global superstorms seem to be on the rise and this a very disturbing thing which people just are not prepared for. For a hobby I have been collecting unusual news stories and reports of a similar nature since I was in high school back in 1973. I would very much like to include the Australia dust storm of 2009 in this years compendium, may I send you a card in the post so you can write a brief account of the storm and autograph it for me also may include a print of the photo which you took of your Mothers automoblie and its red dusty coating? Please send me a postal address which I may contact you from the UK via air mail.
Best Regards, Thomas Finley USAF ret. (paranormalist, cryptozoology, and artist with a fondness for the strange)
Another red dust storm is rolling into the south-west Queensland town of Quilpie this morning.
Local resident Lyn Barnes says visibility is down to a few hundred metres.
“It is actually more like a big rolling cloud of mist really … there’s very little wind, just the tiniest of breezes, it’s not blowing a gale,” she said.
“It’s just really this great big cloud of dust has settled over us.
“We thought with a bit of rain out west this might have all stopped but it’s obviously coming from further beyond.”
http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2009/12/18/2775538.htm?site=northwest
Hmm, I wonder how much “further beyond” Quilpie that might be. :-)