Comments on: Dust Storm Hits Central Eastern Australia

By: moonkoon

moonkoon — Fri, 18 Dec 2009 06:50:07 +0000

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. :-)

By: Thomas Finley

Thomas Finley — Fri, 09 Oct 2009 11:46:22 +0000

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)

By: moonkoon

moonkoon — Tue, 29 Sep 2009 11:29:55 +0000

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.

By: Ian Mott

Ian Mott — Tue, 29 Sep 2009 02:25:07 +0000

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.

By: moonkoon

moonkoon — Mon, 28 Sep 2009 14:42:21 +0000

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? :-)

By: noeline

noeline — Fri, 25 Sep 2009 11:53:39 +0000

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!

By: spangled drongo

spangled drongo — Fri, 25 Sep 2009 04:51:51 +0000

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.

By: Jimmock

Jimmock — Fri, 25 Sep 2009 04:01:10 +0000

Don’t forget the coral reef!
We all know that the Barrier Reef will be bleached by warm water and drowned by rising sea levels, (possibly at the same time – go figure). We know because Penny Wong told us that we need a tax-on-everything to save the reef.
Now we find that the poor asthmatic coral plants will be choked to death.

By: Sid Reynolds

Sid Reynolds — Fri, 25 Sep 2009 02:32:42 +0000

As a child I remember the terrible dust storms of 1939 and more especially those of 1944/45, along with the searing heat, winds and bushfires.

In fact I have just published a book which is currently with the printers, based on my father’s 1944 diary, with my recollections of that year. I have published the book mainly for family and friends, while not for sale it does have an ISBN and a copy will be lodged with the National Library.

Among other things, the book deals with the terrible dust storms of October and December of that year, along with the heat and bushfires. It should be a timely read for our Grandchildren who have just experienced their first bad dust storm.

I would have included a few lines but am away from home. We are currently in Alaska, where among other things have viseted several tidewater glaciers, including the mighty Hubbard Glacier. We are told that Alaska’s glaciers, especially the tidewater glaciers are retreating because of “Global Warming”. However all the glaciers we’ve seen are in fact advancing. When we’ve asked if we could see a retreating glacier, we are told that they do exist but not nearby! And we’ve covered n early 1000 miles of S E Alaska!

And no sign of “Global Warming” here weatherwise!

By: janama

janama — Thu, 24 Sep 2009 23:42:26 +0000

Here’s a comprehensive site on Lake Eyre

http://www.k26.com/eyre/The_Lake/Papers/Lake_Eyre_basics/lake_eyre_basics.html