Sandstorm

“ Little or no shade can be found and no vegetation to hold the soil down in the wind. Mirages obscure terrain and confuse navigation. Sandstorm and dust storm. Strong winds usually sweep the areas from northeast to southwest. A searing sandstorm comes from the east or southeast, which impedes visibility and destroys vegetation. ”

“ These sandstorms are awful things, to which even the most experienced and philosophical of Arabs never get used. Instead of cooling the air, they seem to make it hotter. The heat when a sandstorm is about is remarkably oppressive. ”

“ Again, since rain and cloud are checks upon such systems, we should expect the sandstorm systems to be larger and far loftier than thunderstorms, and to consist of far more violent atmospheric movements. This also is the case, and when we know that some of these disturbances have the dimensions of a cyclonic storm, it is easy to understand how the finest dust may be raised to vast altitudes, into the great upper currents of the air, by which it may be borne hundreds of miles before returning to the ground. ”

“ We were lucky in having calm weather, as a sand-storm in that country is a very serious matter. The air gets as thick as during a bad London fog and one cannot see even a few yards ahead, making it quite impossible to regain camp, all tracks being blotted out in a few minutes by the wind. Our experience of sand-storms was limited to one day, our last day in the desert, luckily for us well outside the region of the sand-hills, when leaving our caravan behind we rode in 50 kilometres to Biskra in the teeth of a cutting wind filled with dust and sand, an extremely painful experience ”

“ CHAPTER IX SAND-STORMS AND THE ROAD TO JALO
I left Jaghbub in accordance with the best tradition. It was a day of sand-storm. The Bedouins say that to start a journey in a sand-storm is good luck. I am not sure, though, that they are not making a virtue of necessity. It is as though an Italian were to say that it is good luck to set out when the sun is shining or a Scotsman when it is raining! Sand-storms are a commonplace in the desert, but as an experience there is nothing commonplace about them. ”

“ It is as though some great monster of fabled size and unearthly power were puffing out these hurtling blasts of sand upon the traveler’s head. The sound is that of a giant hand drawing rough fingers in regular rhythm across tightly stretched silk.
When the sand-storm comes there is nothing to do but to push doggedly on. Around any stationary object, whether it might be a post, a camel, or a man, the eager sands swiftly gather, piling up and up until there remains only a smoothly rounded heap. If it is torture to go on, it is death itself to halt. ”

“ When the north wind, which blows continuously for months, comes into conflict with currents from the south, or yields them the mastery, the traveller suddenly sees the sand become alive, rising in huge pillars as thick as they are high, which whirl more or less rapidly over the plain. The sun’s rays sometimes lend them the ruddy gleam of flames, at another time they seem almost colourless, yet again, portentously dark, the furious storm weakens them and strengthens them, splits them and unites them, sometimes merging two or more into one huge sand-spout which reaches to the clouds. ”

“ They come up suddenly, without the slightest warning, obscuring the light of day. Solid moving columns of red sand, resembling water-spouts, are whirled round and round and blow like a tornado over the town. These sand storms are quite a feature of Kimberley and a very disagreeable one, but they clear the air of any pestilence. The climate, though scorchingly hot during the middle of the day, is otherwise a very pleasant and healthy one. ”

“ In half an hour the wind may be furiously strong, heated as by a furnace and bearing dense clouds of fine dust, of the colour and density of a London fog, together with coarser sand that stings the face. Woe to one who has to travel against such a storm! The dry heat soon produces intolerable thirst, the eyes, nose and mouth are filled with sand, while one’s face, eyelashes and even teeth are caked with mud produced by it with the natural moisture. ”

“ These storm-clouds, without rain, always precede the rainy season, as also the sand-storms, and those gigantic whirlwinds that may be seen passing over the desert by the dozen, and extending in some instances 1000 feet high, carrying up sand, sticks, and other articles that lie in their course; many of them measure 100 feet through. It is a strange sight to see many of these sand-columns passing along over a plain. ”

“ The thunderstorms of the coast broke frequently over that cluster; it turned then shadowy in its whole extent; it turned more dark, and as if more still in the play of fire; as if more impenetrably silent in the peals of thunder; its blurred shapes vanished--dissolving utterly at times in the thick rain--to reappear clear-cut and black in the stormy light against the gray sheet of the cloud--scattered on the slaty round table of the sea. ”

“ The sand raised from the beach was formed into sand-whirlwinds, which reached to a great altitude, and, breaking, descended with the torrents of rain invading every place; the houses themselves, even those most solidly built, trembled from the impetuous violence of the wind, and shook everything contained in them. ”

“ When day broke, though as yet no rain was falling, a storm was already gathering itself for the onslaught. Fine dust filled the air, and the wind was racing up the valley with the swiftness of a prairie fire, where, on the alkali flats, great breakers of white dust rose from the sea of dry storm that ran ahead of the rain. Dead branches of greasewood, tumble-weeds light as sea-spume on the waves of the wind, rabbit-brush wrenched from the roots—these (the drift-wood of desert seas) , were swept on and away! ”

“ There are certain rules about the behavior of sand-storms which every Bedouin knows and is quite ready to tell the stranger to the desert. The wind that makes the storm will rise with the day or go to sleep with the sun. There will be no sand-storm at night when there is a moon. A sand-storm never joins the afternoon and evening. These are excellent rules; but on our trek to Jalo every one of them was broken! ”

“ It is extremely hot here at present; in fact, enough to roast one during the day, with a hot wind blowing a perfect hurricane: and, talk about dust and sand, it’s enough to blind one. We have been treated of late to several sand-storms, as they are called out here, and I think they have given them their right name. It’s awful to stand and see them coming on: the whole heavens become black, all is still, not a breath of air: all at once we are enveloped in sand, the wind blowing enough to sweep all before it. ”

“ For the last two days a sand-storm of unusual violence has been raging. On the ridges above the town one can hardly stand on one's feet; the grains fly upwards, over the crest of the hill, in blinding showers, mighty squadrons of them careering across the plain below. The landscape is involved in a dim, roseate twilight. But occasionally there comes a sickly radiance from behind the curtain of cloud that glimmers lustreless, like an incandescent lamp seen through a fog: it is the sun shining brightly in the pure regions of the upper air. ”

“ Tightening his grip Carew leant forward soothing the terrified animal with voice and hand. The gloom was increasing, the gusts of hot wind more frequent and of longer duration, bringing with them now the stinging whip of driving sand. There was a distant muttering like the far off surge of waves beating against a rocky coast and suddenly the sun went out, hidden by the racing clouds that swept across the heavens, and with a tearing, whining scream the storm broke. ”

“ A storm of summer has its redeeming sublimities,—its slow, upheaving mountains of cloud glooming in the western horizon like new-created volcanoes, veined with fire, shattered by exploding thunders. Even the wild gales of the equinox have their varieties, —sounds of wind-shaken woods and waters, creak and clatter of sign and casement, hurricane puffs and down-rushing rain-spouts. ”

“ Others have lost their way when traversing the sandy plains, and have wandered about, in vain seeking for water to quench their burning thirst. On one side is the salt ocean, on the other the rocky precipices of the mountains. Wandering on for hours and hours, at length, exhausted, they have abandoned themselves to despair. These sand-storms occur more especially during the heats of summer, so completely altering the appearance of the country, by covering it with large hillocks, that the most experienced guides find it at times impossible to discover their way ”

“ It might seem that these inhabitants of the desert would lead a miserable life, and especially that they would often be swallowed up in the terrific sand storms, which sometimes sweep over these wastes. The sand, being loose and dry, is borne upward by the whirling tempest, and is seen driving over the plain, like a terrific thunder-cloud. The experienced traveler sees the coming danger, and prepares himself for it. ”

“ The rush of the sand-storm, the sweep of the pestilence, the mortality from famine, tropical rains, the heat of the ocean on open sands, are all as extravagant in their character as the intensity of the sunshine, which again is constantly described as a deluge of heat and light. ”

“ After one of those terrible wind storms, the only really incommoding desert weather, it is possible to find great spaces all rippled and lined in water-markings like a sea that has suddenly undergone a magic transformation into sand. ”

“ If we suppose the tempest to be followed, after the sand is dry, not by a gentle breeze, but by a wind powerful enough to lift at the same time particles of very various magnitudes and weights, the heaviest will often lodge on the dune while the lighter will be carried farther. This would produce a stratum of coarse sand, and the same effect might result from the blowing away of light particles out of a mixed layer, while the heavier remained undisturbed. ”

“ No sound broke upon the stilness around them, save the sound of their own shovels against the stones and gravel, and the distant roar of the chafing ocean. But at this moment there rose a wild and powerful wind, which brushed down upon them like a tornado. The trees bent and quivered before it, the leaves flew, and dust and gravel, and light substances on the ground, were whirled into the air, and carried aloft and abroad with great rapidity. ”

“ The grey grows ever denser, and soon the night will fall:
The wind runs sobbing over the beach and touches with its hands
Straw, chaff, old bottles, broken crates, the litter of the sands.
Sometimes the bloated carcase of a dog or fish is found,
Sometimes the rumpled feathers of a sea-gull shot or drowned.
Last year it was an unknown man who came up from the sea,
There is his grave hard by the dunes under a stunted tree.
With heavy doleful clamour, hour on hour, and day on day,
The muddy groundswell lifts and breaks and falls and slides away.
(2) SNOW AT SEA
Andante. ”

“ Placing a stick into the ground, in a few moments a heap of sand would accumulate on the windward side. These sand storms fill up all the mouths of the Alt, and pile the sand up in big banks. If there was no correcting force these sand storms would quickly fill up the shallow shores and destroy their capacity to impound the tidal water which assists the scouring power of the main stream; but at high water with a westerly gale the waves churn up these deposits of sand, and the ebb tide carries them out to sea. ”

“ Every hurricane cuts a wider and deeper gash, fills the air with clouds of loose sand, and gives sinister addition to the white shifting heaps and fields that steal slowly yet unrelentingly over the green hinterland of forest which lies below the southern slopes. Trees yet to die stand in passive bands at their feet; the stark, black trunks of trees long dead rise here and there in spots where the sand-glacier has done its work of ruin and passed on. ”

“ When the violent whirlwinds which prevail in the desert, terminate in gusts of wind, they usually expand over several square miles of surface, raging with irresistible force, and bearing upward an immense body of sand, which descends as the current of air that gave it action dies away, thus creating the extraordinary appearance in question. ”

“ The wind does much to help the waves in their patient beating on rocky shores. If the wind blows from the ocean and the tide is landward, the two forces combine, and the loose rocks are thrown against the solid beach with astonishing force. Even the gravel and the sharp sand are tools of great usefulness to the waves in grinding down the resisting shore. Up and back they are swept by the water, and going and coming they have their chance to scratch or strike a blow. Boulders on the beach become pockmarked by the constant sand-blast that plays upon them. ”

“ One feels the intensity and magnitude of even the slightest gust of the sand storm in the vast and trackless waste. There is no need there for magnification. The boundless sea of sands is a sufficient background. ”

“ Instead of refreshing breezes, which would have come as a positive godsend, the wind, blowing from the south-west, spread abroad an abominable vapour, and caused the sand to rise and fall like the bosom of the ocean. ”