On Tuesday night, I stayed up and watched Andromeda Strain on Sydney tellie. Then at 6.00 on Wednesday morning I woke up and looked out the window. Spooooky!!

I think it's not very good for your photocamera, but this are realy beautiful pictures!

很漂亮

looks like tragic movie scenes.

Great shots, this website, too... ;)

I wonder, nobody was wearing a respiratory protection, except some funny pieces of towel around the mouth that don ´t help at all.....I encourage all who will experience it for the next time to be prepared....buy respirators, eyewear in advance!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Is it just me, or don't the photos seem to be post-processed a lot? All is brown and #20 look like partly masked.

#23 - Nice Shot!

A real appreciation for clean air. awesome picy's

this is a great selection of photos.

to anyone blaming this on global warming: these things have happened in australia for a long, long time, the continent is mostly desert, after all. melbourne had a similar storm about 25 years ago, i think sydney's last was 70 years ago or thereabouts. in the interior of the country, dust storms are a seasonal event, but they don't often cross the great dividing range to reach the main coastal cities - hence they don't make the international news media.

and yeah, australia ratified kyoto, please leave that red herring in the bucket ...

I think I had a nightmare like #18 before, haha. But it's still beautiful.

Looks like mars

This was incredible.
Skymon was over Mars.
I saw all.

I was in Sydney on business - incredible opening the hotel curtains at sunrise from the 30th floor of the Four Seasons!!

Looks frightening...sth like a never ending orange night..hold on boys an girls!

#20 = Revesby Railway Station.

An evil spirit brings ill tidings upon the land!

We get such storms all the time during summer in the East of Saudi Arabia >_>

It is such a shame that the international coverage only included Sydney. I live on the Sunshine Coast in Queensland (100km north/1 hour drive north of Brisbane) and we were choked by the same dust storm. We are a good 13 hours drive north of Sydney. Further soouth of Sydney was also blanketed and for 100's of kilometres inland of the coast as well. Today was a bit of a clean up however we are expecting more of the same to come through on Saturday afternoon/evening. For those people who have questioned the photo's and wondering if they have been touched up - no they haven't. I took photo's later in the day when I could get outside and breathe at the same time from a little while (I am an asthmatic) and if you can imagine the world looking like a sepia photo that is exactly how it looks at around the 3pm-4pm mark.

23 Sep 2009
23 de septiembre de 2009: y Sídney despertó naranja...
Escrito por: Hayda Ramos el 23 Sep 2009 - URL Permanente
Que un gran incendio rodeaba la ciudad... o que había llegado el fin del mundo. Esos fueron, dicen, los pensamientos más habituales a primera hora de la mañana, cuando Sídney -la mayor ciudad de Australia- amaneció con el cielo teñido completamente de un tono rojizo-anaranjado.

Pero pronto se supo que, afortunadamente, no se trataba ni de una cosa ni de la otra. Todo era consecuencia de una espectacular tormenta de polvo y arena procedente de los desiertos del centro del país. Más allá de lo llamativo de las imágenes, la extraña nube ha paralizado la circulación en todas sus formas, ha obligado a cerrar colegios y autopistas y ha colapsado los hospitales. Ante la vasta cantidad de arena en el aire, quienes peor lo han pasado han sido las personas con problemas respiratorios.

Lo cierto es que una vez pasado el susto inicial, las imágenes que nos deja el fenómeno son de una belleza singular: una ciudad bañada en tonos rojizos y anaranjados en la que sus habitantes parecen sacados de las más clásicas fotografías en tono sepia...

P.D.: La Fundéu BBVA (Fundación Español Urgente) recomienda la forma hispanizada del topónimo de Sydney, adaptado al español como Sídney.

Wot an awesome pics... it's hard to imagine though .. living in a country like that !! hmm ..scary !
Thanks for sharing by the way !

Isn't it awesome how god arranges all these storms for our viewing pleasure? Sucks to be an Ozzie though.

Concerning post #59: seriously? It's two pictures taken from the exact same location. And I'm sure they looked at their watch to check the date and time.

Loved the comment: Maybe Australia will sign up for Kyoto now ... or maybe not. Loon, you could sign up for welfare and food stamps and make just as much of difference on the planet. Do us a favor, hollow your head out like a gourd and let birds live in it, then you'll be doing something for the planet.

One of my favorite blogs :)
On one hand that sand storm is a scary phenomenon, on the other it ads diversity to day to day life, like some holiday :D
I hope nobody got hurt.

It's so dust!

In Photo #5, does anyone know what that street sign means? The one with the bike.

I was there and took off from the Sydney airport just after 9am...I guess it was quite unusual for Aussies to see this sort of thing in Sydney, but as a traveller it wasn't that unusual...looks like Dubai on a regular basis...another reason not to like Dubai!

comment #52, Get a room!!

I wonder if communitychannel is doing ok...

amazing pictures! Stunning! ^^

Superfantasy

Nice pictures! I wonder how many cameras got dusty taking those pictures.

I live in Sydney, and was up at 5:15 AM to go for a run (which was cancelled by the way). The sky was dark and the dust looked like normal fog. Only just before 6 AM when the sun came up did everything turn red, then orange then an hour later, yellow, before the air started to clear mid-morning. It was worse out west. Check out this video from Broken Hill, where daylight quickly faded to black:
http://www.crikey.com.au/2009/09/23/thats-not-a-dust-storm-this-is-a-dust-storm/?source=cmailer

Amazing that there isn't left behind more of the red dust after the sky cleared. I would have expected that cars buildings and people would have turned red by that dust too. . .

The sky will turn red like blood and, fire and smoke will fill the air

Dom (comment #130) that sign is to indicate that there is a shared foothpath b/w people and bicycles.

@45, I think using the word 'Extreme' is just trying to hype your climate change ideas & views. A more accurate term would be 'long'. Long droughts are a once-in-50-year event in Australia. There were long droughts in the 1940s and the decade after 1900.

The opening of the North west & North east passages is clearly climate change. Making a same call for drought in Australia is less clear. Who can determine the true mix of natural variation and climate change.

This dust storm is both natural and artifice. It's seed is actually a flood event, not drought. Large parts of the central desert regions of Australia have seen a massive flood. As part of these floods, large amount of fine sediment have been deposited in many places. It's the return of normal dry conditions that made this volume of fine dust available. Same storm two years ago would not have produced this amount of dust. Some of the dust reaching the coast is due to man activities. Over clearing and over glazing has contributed to the dust load. News coverage here clearly shows that some of the dust load has come from over stocked and over cleared lands between the central deserts and Great Dividing Range. The result of bad practice both private and public.

It was so surreal, I got woken up by sms's early in the morning, waking me up to the amazing sight! Real early in the morning everything was black apart from a red glow from the ground, then followed by the deepest orange and red I had ever seen the world looking! Cars in garages still ended up dusty, friends who left windows open in their house had rooms covered in a sheet of dust.. It also rained the night before, so the dust got really caked on to my, and most other cars! It travelled 1500km and engulfed most of the East Coast of Australia! My friends in other cities scattered across the east coast also complaining of the dust!

Everything looks so eerie . . . sort of apocalyptic.

we have more in kuwait

Looks the same as what happened in Melbourne in 1983. It's definitely climate change involved here. The same drought and wind systems that caused this are what caused the megafires in February this year and in 2008 further south, here in Victoria. Actually it's not a drought, droughts here usually last 18 months to 2 years. We've now had this for 10 years, with a 40% drop in our average annual rainfall over that time, so it looks to me like it's long-term climate change. And it's definitely human caused. I did a degree in Climatology specialising in climate change back in the 1970's when it was all theory. Now I can see things we said would happen are hitting us. It's maybe not too late to avoid the worst though, as long as the whole world acts NOW.

Bloody bewdy! Do you do this all the time, Boston - or just when big stuff happens? Best and most beautiful images I've seen in a month of Sundays.
Big hand from an impressed Sydneysider.

re #144

Ye Gods!

This last dust storm is a mild one compared to the one on November 12th 1902.

Large dust storms are a frequent natural occurrence here in Australia. All this crap about climate change is just ignorant hype.

If there's one thing you can say for sure about climate it's that it WILL change, so adapt or perish!

creepy_.WHY_go>to_mars::when?m/\rs_comes

Are these storms common? its scary to know that there were such high blowing winds which carried all the dust from the deserts...

wow. I'm planning on being in Sydney and Surfers next month. Crazy. I've seen such storms in California and Nevada. I think I'll be bringing my face mask.

This is not photoshoped, It looks like it could be, but it's 100% real. It's worst than most the dust storms in deserts around the world. The reason why it is red is because it comes from the Ayre's rock region. The sand their is really red and it is a great landmark (check this link: http://www.digitalphotographysecrets.com/images/all%20article%20images/0184318-AyersRockSunrise1.jpg.) Finally this a freak incident, let's hope things don't get worst in the future. This is bad enough.

marvellous ...never have see such a cute dust storm in me entire life .....well done lad you took good pics

The clock is ticking. The pace is quickening. The human race is doomed to destroy itself!

We Terraformed Mars?! jk, in the Phoenix, AZ area we have crazy Haboob dust storms during monsoon season.

Dust storms here in Australia are not a new phenomena, it's just been a while since we've had one. Sydney always likes to make a big deal of things but this really isn't. Yes it was red, freaky colours and damn annoying to clean up. Melbourne was blanketed by an amazing dust storm in 1993. For the past 100 years or more in QLD there have been massive dust storms. I recall many during my childhood and spending days afterwards helping my mother clean blinds.

This is NORMAL in Australia, anyone who says anything else is just fear mongering.

I am from Poland. I haven't seen something like that. it is very interesting. I would like to go there. I wish you everything good.

Hello, I just arrive from Belgium to Sydney a week ago, for a period of 2 to 4 years. When I wake up in the morning at 6:40, from my bed I open the curtains, I had a look outside, I jump out of my bed, I was sure the city was burning, I was so scared.
I thought I will never see my partner, family and friends. Really one of the strongest feeling I felt in my live. But....
I open the balcony and it was not smelling fire, not at all. I was so amazed. For sure, I will keep this as a very chance to had the privilege to see this. It was magic, end of the world civilization feeling. I could not believe it was real.

in Toowoomba South east Qld the sun was blue

@ Chris Greaves: They use a GPS logger that you can synchronize with the camera.

Like being in Mars

I find it so amusing that people who are not from Sydney think we're egocentric enough to make the dust storm solely focussed on us. I don't think Sydney-lovers are so deeply entrenched in the international media that we can coerce them into writing stories simply to feed our own desire to be the epicentre of Australia. We are the largest city, we have the largest population. These are facts.

One must assume then that those making snide little remarks about people focussing too much on Sydney are envious and bitter that they are not, in fact, from Sydney. Why else would you bother to make a smarmy comment?

that's crazzzzy! soo amazing.

That is a bad dust storm.

the wheater goes nuts... in aussie sandstorm in the usa flooding...
poore people :/

See also: A print-on-demand magazine of photos from the storm: http://strangelightmag.com

Time to gather spice have come :)

Amazing pictures!!! dust red in the wind...

Praise the pictures and what not. Mothere Nature is tired of repriminding the spoilt human beings to stop meddling with Her. Pay-back time is approaching, so cheer up at those "great pictures" and "great shots", you all stupid and dumb humans.

Great pictures. A big clean up is in store, but we don't have any WATER.!
THE END IS NIGH!

This is natural for our changing climates to make us realise there is a beast amongst the beauty of the world....comments like #168 is a bit of a childish way to approach people in this world....that is how wars happen and comments like those only make you realise #168 is talking of them self.....not the rest of us intelligent humans who try and make the world a better place and share disasters. I have many friends over the world and we all share our heartaches like normal people. A friend in Kuwait suffers these all the time.....dust everywhere. Fantastic pictures and we have a beautiful country regardless of a few disasters....come and visit sometime and enjoy the beauty and friendships....

These photographs are amazingly beautiful!! Well done! I lived in Australia (Whyalla SA) and in 1968 I experienced a dust storm coming from the desert and it was just like this one in Sydney. Thanks for sharing!

Calgary, Alberta, Canada

I spent four years in Lybia and I know this kind of desert sand; i found very strange - Sydney is not Tripoli- to see so scary pics in Australia; I do think the main reason sticks to the rise of the earth temperature; we have to be prepared to see more and more phenomena coming up ... but, what shots ! ! !

in my 83 years I cant remember anything like this storm. Ibelieve we had one 70 odd years ago, I was still at school and maybe didnt bother about things like that then, I will keep these photos in my Memoirs for my grandchildren

@110 - They might be processed, but don't forget that Distance = More Dust. So particularly blue light sources like fluorescent lights will appear brighter than might seem natural. 20 looks reasonably correct - I have photos somewhere of Newcastle, Australia during a storm caused by smoke/ash from major bushfires. The Cityrail platforms really do look out of place like that.

Early in the morning was particularly red. Towards the latter parts of the day it was a lighter brown/grey.

It's plain as day. As the continent of Australia drifts westward on the continental plates, the Australians, being so contrary in just about everything, have decided to blow it back south-eastward. Based on this theory (or conjecture), New Zealand should be twice the size of Australia in 32,641 years and it won't matter how contrary the Aussies are, there will not be enough of left them to matter... they will all be in New Zealand.

Gu'day!

I happen to collect sands from all over. Could anybody send me a sample of that dust. A couple of soup spoonfuls would be great! The mailing is obviously on me!

thanks

It was an amazing day!
Usually when the sky looks like this, it's cracking 40 deg C, but this day was cool - maybe 20-25C. We kept our workshop closed up and listened to the wind howl its frustrations at us. Any time we went outside, we got the visual shock of the red sky all over again.
Thank Jeebus there's beer which made all the dust go away.

Pic #1 is an absolute corker, in a great bunch.

I think it seem like the environment of the Mars don't you think ?
I believe this is an effect of global warming .

We,ve been having dust storms for thousands of years.....oh yeah lets blame global warming !

i know what you mean. when this happens in slough UK near chalvey, theres car accidents and people are thrown about al over the place with the number of emergencies in hospitals significantly arising

Re: comment #82 from JG ... I have never heard so much factoid dribble crammed into a couple of paragraphs. Lets see you've got old growth forests being felled in central Australia and cotton farmers paying off the politicians to cause bushfires in Victoria. Are you sure it wasn't caused by the Japanese killing whales or by big brother putting flouride in the drinking water? If you are truly interested in natural resource issues go and do some real research so that you can voice an opinion and contribute to positive change without making a laughing stock of yourself.

Wow!! It isn't amazing for me to see red dust - we live in outback NSW where red dust is normal, but to see this dust in Sydney is phenomenal! Fantastic pics...

We got it on the 27th of September, here in New Caledonia and although it was not that red anymore, it was still pretty much an unusual sight, if we can call it sight since there was little to see. Light orange fading to grey that arrived around midday to last until the evening.

I guess the main thing is we definitely got thirsty having to breath all the dust!

Definitely something unusual at this strength, a wake up call to mankind to take care of the planet?

Here's the harbour bridge. Well... it is there, I promise.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/royaltech/3949025770/

I sometimes get this feeling that we are becoming overwhelmed with a glut of breathtaking "earth images". However wondrous it is to be able to see what's going on this very second on the other side of the globe I think it leads to a sense of temporal and physical loss of place and proportion. Judging by how people comment on such images and events online and in conversation, I fear this glut amplifies already ingrained feelings of dread and powerlessness towards nature. These feelings in turns seem to be affecting both scientific literacy and the ability to reason through cause and effect.

Not even one hundred years ago, news of events could have taken months to reach our eyes, and then only as printed words to the rare few who picked up and read news papers or recieved a letter about such events. Rarely would anyone alive have been able to report about these extremes of nature unless they lived through them or came upon the wreckage. And even with the advent of photography, the average person would not have seen disaster photos or been aware of the extent. Until very recently, only oral tradition or selectively written records could have moved such news through the generations or into a wider geographic area. And then, much detail was lost.

The Asian tsunami of 1700, the great Midwest fire of 1910, entire regions of the US barrier islands turning over for centuries, entire tribal lands going under the waves, the Galveston hurricane of 1900, the Netherlands flood of 1228, the Independence Hurricane of 1775, the middle east earthquake of 1201, the Tambora eruption of 1815, the Laki eruption of 1783, the great US blizzard of 1899. … I could go on.

These are only a select cherry picked few events with high death tolls or dramatic impacts on population centers or the physical environment. My point is not that these pictures are wrong. God forbid. My point is this; be careful that you're not assuming too much. Don't assume too much about our modern world based on beautiful or tragic pictures that come onto your computer screen and then combine with the little tidbits of fact, trivia and theological teachings that we each carry around inside of ourselves…

As to these pictures, they are astounding. :)

like armageddon

A friend sent me some pictures from Broken Hill, approx 1200km (750mi) West of Sydney. It was 3.30pm and bitch black dark, visibility down to 5 meters... now to think that that much dust moved east in 12 hours, is amazing, I live about 300km West of sydney, and it was bad here at about 5am the morning after I was sent those pictures, probably a little heavier than Sydney.

People living in small countries, or states, may boast about the density of dust storms in their regions. However if they have not been here I doubt that they grasp the vastness of Australia. The dust storm affected the entire eastern coast, I invite you to check out any atlas.

Regardless of size, density or where in the world they affect, dust storms are a natural occurance. They can be devastating.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/letsmakeart/sets/72157622437135512/

Some photos of the dust storm when it hit Brisbane.

Amazing, great fotos and strange situation for the people of Sidney

Don't you think something is going on in that hemisphere with the 3 earthquakes and Tsunami? Kinda biblical actually. God have mercy on us all.

Does anyone know what caused it? It's just that it doesn't look like its very windy in all the "dust-storm" photos. In the middle-east when there's a sand storm, there's lots of wind about. The wind is just as menacing as the sand. But even in the Utube video of the couple driving into the height of the dust storm, there's NO sign of any wind. That's why it look so eerie, everything looks so still, like a fog rolling in. There's supposed to be wind that accompanies a dust storm, isn't there?

Utterly unbelievable....but true...wish I was there to see what it was like...must be rare in one's life time....but I also pity Aussies for having to go thru all that. I don't think it's a good kick, after all!!

The environment in the world has been so bad. but i also think it's beautiful still.

I like #9 she's hot

Wouah 24 !!

Excellent pictures

when the earth turns RED....the evils is everywhere...

I absolutely love your photos! Makes me want to travel abroad again and get more cool pics. Nice work!

Great photo's, It was not as bad in Brisbane but we still copped it here, I had just done all the vacuuming and dusting.
I do have to agree with one writer that says dust storms are not new in Australia, but we don't get them very often here in Brisbane. It was a very claustrophobic experience.

I wish to see it with my own eyes someday.

i like those pictures.

when did that happen