A dust storm has blanketed Sydney and the sky is orange. Pics to follow.

All international flights have been diverted to Brisbane.

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This sounds mad,really?

You can taste the dust. Everything is orange.



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Yes, I am just waking in Sydney - I can literally 'taste' the dust, and smell it, even inside. It is odd.

I remember something similar happening a few years ago, but then we just woke up to find a blanket of orange dust over the cars. It was nothing like this.

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Amazing picture.
A couple weeks ago when the Station fire was devouring hundreds of acres of scrubland in a day, huge thunderheads of smoke built up over the San Fernando Valley - they called them 'pyrocumulus clouds'. If a fire gets big enough it creates its own weather, as the Australians know quite well. Eventually it settled over us as a thick brown blanket of particulates, and we were told not to exercise outdoors if we could possibly avoid it. It covered the cars with a fine ash and turned the green stoplights blue. It's cleared off since, luckily, but the fire's still going.

Do you remember your President Nixon?

Some of the dust has blown away. The sky is yellow now, instead of orange.

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Apparently some flights have also been diverted to Melbourne. People should be fine going there - they only had a couple of earthquakes overnight.

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Does that dust get into the house? What if you're a car lover like me and take care of your car? What do the cars look like? Are the interiors filthy?

Sounds like they might as well live here.

Do you remember your President Nixon?

Everyone's car (that was outside last night) has a layer of orange dust on it, but most of them are quite modern and are fairly well sealed, so interior dust. That said, people indoors can taste the dust as it's very fine and gets in through the slightest gap (aided by the wind).

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Yes the Dust is even Here ,at South West Rocks, can't even see the Trail Bay
Goal,,I beleive where it rain the colour was Orange, have we been Transported
to Mars it does look Spooky
bats

There are stories, pics and video in the Daily Telegraph and Sydney Morning Herald, if anyone's curious.

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Crikey! it's getting in people's vegemite!

meanwhile in atlanta (a city usually beset with drought) we have had rain of BIBLICAL proportions for the last 7 days. perfect to coincide with me getting rid of my gas guzzling lincoln and switching to a motor scooter. a boat would have been better.

a boat would have been better

LOL. We could do with some of that rain down here. We all thought that the drought we've had for years was finally coming to an end with rains last autumn that began filling up the previously deleted dams. Then we had the driest August on record and the thing started getting worse again - hence the practically unprecedented dust storm.

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woo - serious sounding.
Will say a little prayer (good-thought!)
for you all in Austrealia....wha'a cacksucker the weather can be,,,,, CriKEY !!!!!

(whiskers WAY down, dude(ttes)
Dr.Ink

It's more or less cleared now. Funny, I was getting into the car yesterday morning and was saying how dirty it was and that we needed to go to a car wash. Glad we didn't.

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my car's so small I lick it clean....
you should see my &^%$#&*^..!!!! lol

We had another surprise visitor today:



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... some people a never happy!

We've had rain over here in the beautiful West for 20 days in a row - practically unheard of.

What we would give for a morning dust storm, you lucky, lucky bastard!

See I told you were transported to Mars by the look of that huge lizard
Beam Me UP!! out of here
On the news it reported about 75 tons per hour of soil Dumped ,,all I know there will be a lot of DUSTING tomorrow you should see the Dust in the House
to-day clean all my Bowie CD
Bats

It's a small concern next to Atlanta's floods, Cali's wildfires and Australia's duststorms, but here in Madison, Wisconsin we've had our coldest summer on record. It's all backwards out there.

What in the world can you do?

That said, we have enough cold weather up here, it would have been nice to have a few sweltering days.

They're predicting a record-breaking hot/dry summer here in Aus - which usually has hot/dry summers.

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Well the Day is just beautiful all the Dust has gone out to Sea
But the Car -Cleaners are doing BIG business,,lot of People
had their Air Condit,,,clucked up,, why put them on with all that Dust
the Storms even went up to Queensland
bats

HI BATS..... I's GOING TO GO CRASH?TRASH....
JUST ONLY WANTED TO TO SAY HI?BYE



YEAH??????
:_)
~DR-INK

I'm sure you'll be pleased to know that the calamity has finally made the news here - I'm sure you're over it by now.

Do you remember your President Nixon?

So all you need now is a small tsunami in a few minutes.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/world/news/article.cfm?c_id=2&objectid=10600389

Not in Aus. You're supposed to be getting it in NZ, however.

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True.
http://tvnz.co.nz/world-news/no-tsunami-threat-australia-3040218