Bringin' Da Rain, Bringin' Da Dust

My facebook feed has been blowing up all day with fearful posts from people's safe rooms thanks to the heinous line of storms that made its way through Tennessee last night. Thankfully all of my friends and family are safe. They didn't want all those trees in their yards anyway.

Tennessee's not the only place that's had some crazy weather this week. Yesterday morning the Mister and I were greeted with a chilly morning shower on our commute to work. A cold front must have moved in over night and brought a little "cloud vomit," as one of my sweet angels put it.

As it is wont to do in Kuwait, the rain quickly subsided. But then the sky turned red.

Literally.

Photos shamelessly stolen from Charles and Tom, respectively. Thanks, guy!

Photographs just don't do these dust storms justice. In Saudi, the dust was actually kind of white and just looked like gritty fog. But more times than not, the dust in Kuwait is literally red. Like terra cotta red. And just like in Saudi, it. gets. everywhere.

So there you have it. North America has tornadoes. Kuwait starts the day with rain and works its way to flying dirt.

Vicariously yours,

Featured Photo: You could say it's a little dusty today

This is a shot from our living room balcony. But seriously, y'all, this isn't even as dusty as it's going to get. Today's dust was a bit of a morning surprise, and unlike what we commonly saw in Saudi Arabia, it stuck around all day long. But boy was it a gross, lung-clogging day!

Just so you have a frame of reference, here's the same shot but from a lovely, clear day.

Yuck.

Vicariously yours,

Forget King days, Sand days are better!!

Wooo! Two 4 day work weeks in a row!!

As the Mister and I were about to go to bed last night I said, "Smells like a sand storm," referring to the atmosphere. Not...nevermind.

Not 2 minutes later, the windows started to howl with the gales that were blowing through the streets of our neighborhood. It was a sandstorm, alright. According to a local, this is one of the worst sand storms the area has had in a while.

The Mister went out to take photographic evidence of what a friend has dubbed "Sandmageddon." He had to wear this get-up:

As we were falling asleep, I said, "I wonder if we'll get out of school for this." I was only half joking. But what to my wondering eye did appear this morning when I checked my text messages?? "No school tomorrow, go back to sleep."

YES!

I followed instructions and went back to sleep! GLORIOUS!

Sand days are like snow days, but warmer and so much more awesome. Well...slightly. They're definitely more awesome because they're so regionally specific. But apparently you only get sand days when you get storms like this one:

This is the same storm that blew into town last night around 10:30...but in Kuwait. It was hitting Kuwait yesterday afternoon. A friend of ours posted this on his facebook, so we had the sneaking suspicion that our night would be windy.

I love the fact that sand days are basically snow days with all the sleeping in and none of the shivering, but I'm definitely not going to enjoy the clean up.

Because we were still awake when the storm hit, we made sure everything was closed up tight. But there are only so many towels you can stuff under doors, so we expected a light dusting inside the house.

My dining room table, which I had just dusted 2 days ago?

Looks like this now.

Dangit!

Oh well, I'll have plenty of time to go back over the house with the dust rag because I DON'T HAVE TO WORK TODAY!!

Suckas!

Vicariously yours,

You're killin' me, Shmalls!

California has mudslides. Oklahoma has tornadoes. New England has the Nor'easter.

Saudi Arabia has sandstorms.

They're not limited to Saudi Arabia, obviously. Just google "sandstorm" and you'll see all kinds of images and amazing YouTube videos from all around the Middle East (and Australia, apparently). But this is my first time regularly experiencing sandstorms, so they're shiny and new and exciting for me. Well, not really shiny. Quite the opposite, actually...

ANYWAY.

We had our first sandstorm a few weeks ago, but unfortunately I had meetings after work so I couldn't capture pictures of it at its worst. According to the locals and Aramcons, the one a few weeks ago was particularly intense for this early in the season.

I'm not gonna lie, I was slightly disappointed. It was bizarre how quickly the storm descended upon us. You can literally smell it coming. First you notice that the air smells dusty all of a sudden, and then you look out the window to see the dust cloud on the horizon. I was expecting something more dramatic, but so far the storms has just looked like fog.

Another shmall kicked up this morning (that's what the Aramcons call the dust storms. I'm still not sure why). Like last time, I smelled it before I saw it. We left for work and everything was clear and normal. A little overcast, perhaps but not dusty. By the time we had reached work 15 minutes later, the dust had come to town!

It's hard to put it into perspective for you because you don't know what it looks like around here on a normal day. So here's a video from September/October that I took around the same time of day as the pictures below.

Here are pictures of this same view, but taken this afternoon during the dust storm:

This is the light post that gets zoomed in on after about 3 seconds into the video.

There's the bridge to Bahrain.

I'm not sure what this is, even on clear days, but it's sticking out of the water maybe 100 yards off the coast.

There's normally blue water visible just past those trees.

According to everyone at work, this is only the beginning, and these sand storms are amateur compared to what we'll have seen by the end of the season. I'm sure I'll get sick of them eventually, but right now they're an odd new spectacle to marvel at through my camera lens.

Vicariously yours,