Like Living in the Middle East

Yesterday, we had two terrific storms. I woke up to thunder and a pelting shower; within half an hour, it was blowing dust.

Dust storms are part and parcel of living in a rural area, where it's vaguely dusty, windy, and/or summer. But with the drought, no rain, and a lot of topsoil loose - well, the dust storms just get better worse.

You could see the dust gathering on the horizon in a dense, yellow cloud that quickly obliterated everything from view. We went outside to watch it brew, when all of a sudden it was blowing in our ears, in our eyes and in our mouths. It got so bad that we couldn't see anything in our garden, or any of the trees about a metre from the house. The sunlight became a dirty yellow, so dim that at its darkest it was almost red, and we had to turn on the lights.

Taken from inside our living room...

Which, of course, was all well and good until the power went out around 1pm, not long after the storm started, due to a pole coming down somewhere. It was expected to come back on at 6pm, then 7pm, then 9pm (which, thankfully, it did.) But this still meant we had to light candles in order to see (which was actually kind of cool, in an old school kind of way), and cook our dinner over the fire.

Makes you appreciate electricity and running water when the power's out for 8 hours.

Apart from family bonding, the only good thing to come from either of the storms was a bit of rain. But as always, not enough.

Never enough.

x
JAG