A spectacular dust storm has swept across parts of Queensland’s far south-west.
The Outback town of Thargomindah, with a population of about 270 people, was enveloped by the wall of thick brown dust carried on winds up to 93 kilometres per hour.
The ABC reports that, as yesterday’s storm swept through, blue skies gave way to a hazy orange hue, giving the town an apocalyptic feel.
Bulloo Shire Mayor John ‘Tractor’ Ferguson said there had not been a dust storm that severe for a few years.
“I was doing some stuff in the council office and one of the guys looked out and said ‘God, look at this dust storm coming,” Mr Ferguson said. “It was sort of in the south-west and starting to roll in and pick up and then away she went … it got real dark and the street lights started to come on.”
BOM senior forecaster Kimba Wong told the ABC that the weather conditions were not uncommon for the region.
“Just given the time of year at the moment, obviously it’s been our dry season so I imagine that a lot of the soils out in western Queensland are pretty dry,” she said. “Any strong gusts up to 90 kilometres per hour or whatever we’ve seen this afternoon are certainly strong enough to pick that dust up and send it through the dust storm.”
Dust storms are not all that uncommon in the Outback and many grey nomads have experienced the ‘eerie’ phenomenon.
A few years ago, a massive dust storm hit the caravan park at Wilcannia, near Broken Hill in Outback New South Wales giving travellers the scare of their lives.
Grey nomads Anne and Lindsay Richardson were terrified the storm and sand cloud would simply lift their caravan up.
“I looked out the window and went ‘What’s that?’ We just didn’t know what was going to happen,” Mrs Richardson said. “We couldn’t believe it.”
For dust storms to form, the soil needs to be dry and exposed. Then strong winds that can pick up the soil and carry it across long distances. Just how powerful the wind needs to be depends on the size of the dust particles, but the minimum speed is about 30 kilometres per hour.
The Bureau of Meteorology says that, if the conditions are right, storms can move across the country for ‘hundreds, if not thousands, of kilometres’.
That’s what happened with the 2009 dust storm that saw dust travel from South Australia right across the east coast of the country, blanketing Sydney in red and orange dust — and even dropping dust on parts of New Zealand.
Back in January 1983 travelling from Perth to Sydney in my old HQ wagon
there was a huge dust storm on the Hay plains hit us at midnight visibility was only about 15m pulled off after the 1st truck we were both doing about 10k/h finding a safe spot was a challenge