Wow, incredible. Must be a helluva lot of topsoil loss out in the country somewhere! If you're interested, a video link, plus side-show photographs can be found in the link below.:
The huge dust storm which has settled over the city and much of New South Wales was carried east overnight by gale-force winds of up to 100kph.
This morning the weather bureau said the dust cloud was expected to hang around until late afternoon.
Senior forecaster Barry Hanstrum says more high winds are on the way and could cause more damage.... <cont>
"The winds won't drop off until later today and when they do we think that the dust haze will start to clear," he said.
All future climate predictions point to a warmer, drier inland and an increase in the unusually strong winds that carried the dust storm from the South Australian border to the east coast.
However, this does not necessarily mean that today's dust storm is a direct product of climate change.
Although weather conditions today are extremely rare, such storms have occasionally hit the east coast before, and any single weather event can be attributed to random factors that could occur with or without the effect of human-induced climate change.
In the nation's interior, dust storms are a daily event.
It is the natural consequence of a very long drought, and the probable onset of another El Nino effect. The storm today is unusual in that particles were carried as far as the coast.
What seems certain is that future dust storms will get more frequent and probably bigger, as the climate warms. Along with other firmly grounded projections such as an increase in bushfires and a drop in rainfall, we can expect more dust storms in the coming decades as a consequence of climate change. ...<cont>
