I have mentioned in passing that we had some more flying sand this weekend. Although I think this blog had a bit of “sandstorm overload” initially, it’s been a while since I perseverated on this topic, and I have some new pictures for you.

Over the three-plus months that I have been here, I have noted that Al Asad sandstorms come in three different flavors. The first is the “mellow” kind which happens at least a couple of times a week, wherein the trees on main street sway to the southeast and enough brown dust flies up to make it very uncomfortable to be outside without wearing some of the nifty wrap-around goggles which the Army provided us upon deployment. (Or, even better, my geeky spaceman goggles, courtesy of Panoptyx corp and my own hard-earned $300.) This type-1 storm is happening outside even as I write this, and is fairly benign, usually passes by in a few hours, or overnight. It does ground planes, though.

The second type of storm is much more dramatic. The trees are bent sideways, tables and bus stops blow over, and a big massive sandbank slouches towards Al Asad, eventually climbing over, under and into all things. We have had about four of these since I have been here, with the first one I experienced being the worst, a total blackout. These leave a hefty layer of dust everywhere, and keep us all coughing like John Keats for a week or so.

This weekend, we had a storm of the most rare, third type, in which the air turns a truly bizarre bright orange color. There is a Grateful Dead song called Scarlet Begonias, and its storyline goes something like this: Boy meets girl. Boy loves girl. Boy loses girl. Boy has a psychedelic trip and forgets all about girl. In the last verse, the protagonist can’t help but notice that “the sky was yellow and the sun was blue.” Well, with sandstorm type #3, the sky is in actuality orange, and the sun…well, it’s not even visible.

Some snapshots of our “all-orange-all-the-time” storm this weekend:

This is a view of the corridor outside of our cans, where the showers, trash, and water pallets are located. I am standing about 10 feet away from the bathrooms in front of me. The time is 11 AM.

These are the force-protection barriers about twenty feet in front of me. Gives you an idea of the density of this dust.

This hearty marine braved the storm without any protective gear. I had him take a picture of me in my geek goggles, but it didn’t come out right.

I’m not sure what causes the type-2 storm to be brown and just plain ugly, and type 3 to be orange. Perhaps one type of wind stirs up a certain type of dust (i.e., only the lightest stuff on top)? Or maybe these storms are all the same, but some natural phenomenon (the angle of the sun, maybe?) caused the air to take on this hue. Either way, this put a bit of a damper on my sabbath, and though I have to admit that I debated whether or not to go out to church and risk eye, skin and respiratory badness, not to mention grit in all of my pores for the next week (showers notwithstanding), in the end, I had to go because I was teaching the lesson. When I walked in the back door and our group leader Manny Diaz saw me, he breathed a sigh of relief. There were five of us in attendance.

After church, I took advantage of the fact that I had the clinic truck, and that I was pretty sure no one would be needing at, as no one would want to go outside. At 2 PM, I drove around post a bit. By this time, some of the dust had settled, but the wind was still whipping a lot of it around. Some pix from that little excursion:

The main road on Al Asad. As you can see, even four hours after the above pix, the visibility is still very poor.

To get an idea of how hard the wind was blowing at the time of this picture, take a look at the Mitsubishi emblem on the hood, bent over to the right by the full force gale.