Posted on 04/17/2006 7:04:50 PM PDT by blam
Beijing is covered by desert sandstorm
By Richard Spencer in Beijing
(Filed: 18/04/2006)
Beijing's 14 million residents woke to find their houses, cars and bicycles covered in thick, yellow dust yesterday after the worst spring sandstorms for five years.
Workers start to clear the some of the 300,000 tons of sand dumped on the Chinese capital, Beijing
Officials said 300,000 tons of sand whipped up by fierce winds in the Gobi desert more than 1,000 miles away were dumped on the city in a storm that began on Sunday evening. It was the second such storm in a week, the eighth of the spring so far, already beating the long-term average of five or six a year.
By yesterday afternoon, the air was still yellow with the dust and pollution left behind and the storm was heading east to South Korea.
Sandstorms have been a problem for centuries in Beijing, which is shielded from the encroaching desert only by a range of mountains to the north-west. But industrialisation, over-extraction of water from aquifers and rivers, and over-ambitious attempts to develop agriculture in the north-west of the country have hugely increased the size of the country's deserts.
Repeated attempts to hold back the tide of sand have involved the planting of more than 40 billion trees across northern China. But environmentalists have warned that many have died, and while those that survived may have shielded the capital from the worst of the sand in the last five years, they may have drained more water from the soil, making things worse in the long run.
This dust will probably be arriving in Alaska any day now.
</sarc>
Imagine running a marathon in that.. Just think China 2008
Got Mask? (and goggles)
It's a fluctuation in the earth's magnetic flux fields.. it may also explain shrinkage of polar ice packs,, or not.
"This dust will probably be arriving in Alaska any day now."
Is all seriousness it will probably get at least as far a Japan.
Some of my ancestors are from Mobile- from about the time of the Civil War. I was just on the 'phone the other day to the state of Alabama trying to find out more about them.
Hope you get some rain soon!
Yup! A number of years ago a dust cloud from China hit California. The sky was red. Unbelieveable!
We get smoke from Asia all the time. Sometimes it is brown, sometimes blue, depending what is burning. We are about to get some flu birds, hopefully not burning. With the view across the valley to the Alaska Range being about 100 miles, anything in the air shows up well. About 20 years ago the smoke became a fairly constant thing. It wouldn't be any surprise to see some of that yellow dust.
You're not seriousness enough.See Post #7.
The Jet Stream will carry the dust cloud around the world. SAT Photos will follow the dust cloud.
Such storms can be awful.
And cause many hail storms.
>You're not seriousness enough.See Post #7.
The Jet Stream will carry the dust cloud around the world. SAT Photos will follow the dust cloud.<<
I had no idea. Thank y'all for the education.
Big Ben National Park in Texas is a good exaple of pollution from our southern neighbor.The view used to be for hundreds of miles,and thanks to their reckless enviromental habits,on a good day,you can see maybe 10-20 miles.
Big Ben National Park in Texas is a good example of pollution from our southern neighbor.The view used to be for hundreds of miles,and thanks to their reckless enviromental habits,on a good day,you can see maybe 10-20 miles.
Corpus Christi, while on the coast but not near as wet as Mobile, has had 1 inch of rain since Thanksgiving.
We've been below normal every month since Katrina and now, the last six weeks, nothing.
When I lived in Florida, it was not unusual to get blanketed with yellow dust from the Sahara.
Now, years later, I've read that the yellow dust from the Sahara is iron laden and is believed to cause the explosive algae growth in the Gulf Of Mexico known as 'Red Tide.' The 'Red Tide' sucks oxygen out of the water creating dead zones in the Gulf.
Here on the west coast we've had rainy weather practically every day for the last 3 months. Where I live (S.F. peninsula) March and April broke rain records that stood for over a hundred years. But I'll take wet weather over a drought or sandstorms. Any where I dig there's thousands of earthworms. Never saw so many before this year. At least I won't starve, if I can get past the idea of eating them... if I had to.
I'm familiar with the area having lived there a number of years too. There was a wet season and a dry season. You're stuck on wet now, lol.
Interesting how droughts always seem to begin with one really big rain event, then nothing for a long time. Katrina definitely fits that observation.
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