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Sunday, February 22, 2004

Brown rain

So I don’t forget, and in case anyone else finds this interesting or odd. Friday morning when I walked out the door, not only was everything wet from the previous night’s rain, everything was brown. There was a light, but noticeable, covering of brown dirt on everything from cars to plants to the streets.

My first instinct was to think we got a really bad acid rain. It was one of the strangest things I’ve seen. We don’t get a lot of sand around here in the land of black dirt.

Then, Saturday morning, there was an article in the local paper about the brown substance. The National Weather Service is attributing the brown rain to a major dust storm in Texas. Apparently, the wind carried the Texas dust to Springfield where the rain weighted it down to the ground. Even now, on Sunday afternoon, there’s still sand everywhere.

A quick search of Google News turns up a dust storm near Lubbock, Texas. Springfield is just under 1,000 miles from Lubbock. Wow! That's a long way for sand to travel.

Posted by Marie at February 22, 2004 4:35 PM