12 interesting facts about dust storms

Terrible dust storms are no less dangerous than destructive hurricanes or tornadoes. The dust and sand they raise into the air can cause irreparable damage to infrastructure, destroy crops, and cause death of people and animals. Year by year, due to the desertification of once fertile lands, dust storms come with increasing frequency, originating in a deserted area and then hitting inhabited regions.

Interesting facts about dust storms

1. In 2009 Australia was hit by a massive sandstorm that stretched over 1,000 kilometers and was over 500 kilometers wide. It covered several dozen cities, and scientists calculated that at that time about 75,000 tons of sand rose into the air from the mainland every hour.
2. Dust storms are often caused in areas where they usually do not occur, is drought.
3. In eastern Asia, a series of powerful dust storms occurs almost every year, which carry so much sand that they pollute the air even in Canada and the USA, crossing the ocean.
4. On the planet Mars, dust storms sometimes last for months (interesting facts about Mars).
5. During a particularly strong sandstorm, visibility is limited to a couple of tens of meters, but sometimes, when the concentration of dust in the air is low, everything is expressed only in a cloudy haze that seems to hang in the air.
6. The prerequisites for a dust storm to occur are a dry soil surface and a wind speed of at least 6-8 meters per second.
7. In northern China, due to barbaric land use, desertification is proceeding at an alarming rate, about 1,000 square kilometers of space annually turns into a desert. New sandstorms appear there, which then fall on the surroundings, continuing the process of desertification.
8. Sandstorms are born in the Sahara desert every year, which bring grains of sand even to the island country of Cape Verde (interesting facts about Cape Verde).
9. To combat dust storms, planting forests and sowing the soil with grasses are used. Trees stop the wind or at least slow it down, and grass holds the topsoil together.
10. Dust storms often carry dangerous viruses and bacteria from one part of the world to another.
11. A sandstorm is high can exceed a kilometer.
12. Many countries suffer from dust storms, but Egypt and Mauritania suffer the most.