Red Dust That Blanketed Sydney Lifts

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ROBERT SIEGEL, host:

They can see clearly now in Sydney, which is saying something. This week, eastern Australia weathered an enormous dust storm that blanketed Sydney and turned the sky orange red. The Web is full of photos and videos of it. Apocalyptic images of people and buildings silhouetted against the kind of sky that we could only imagine on Mars.

It has raised questions of whether this was just another very big dust up, sweeping dust from the arid outback to the coast or is it a measure of climate change. It also raised questions of when it would end. Neale Fraser is the senior forecaster at the Bureau of Meteorology in Sydney. And Mr. Fraser, is the storm now over?

Mr. NEALE FRASER (Senior Forecaster, Bureau of Meteorology): Oh, it certainly is. It lasted for about five or six hours in Sydney itself, but the dust cloud continued right up the east coast of Australia right up to North Queensland. So, it's equivalent to an area from, say, New York right down to Miami. That distance involved or maybe even more than that, so it just carried on and the dust carried on across the Tasman Sea as well.

SIEGEL: Describe what it's like when you're in the middle of this dust storm.

Mr. FRASER: Well, it's never occurred in Sydney in my memory. I think in the records, which go back 150 years, it's the worst we've ever had in Sydney. And when we - everyone woke up and looked out, the sun was just coming up and it was just orange. It was just really eerie. The other thing to notice was I didn't hear many birds singing. So, it was quite an eerie sort of feeling.

SIEGEL: And there was wind. I've seen videos. The trees are obviously showing great wind, but not rain.

Mr. FRASER: No, certainly not rain. It was from the west. And initially, the winds weren't terribly strong in the morning. That's what made it seem even more eerie. But during the morning, the winds picked up and started to blow. As the sun rose, it brightened. So the thickness of the dust was still there, but it seemed brighter. The orange glow disappeared. And then, eventually by about the middle of the day, it all blew out to sea and cleared Sydney.

SIEGEL: Eerie is one of the words I've heard. Surreal. Of course, when you give a forecast, you don't say it will be eerie and surreal this afternoon and…

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SIEGEL: What are the words that you were hearing used to describe this experience?

Mr. FRASER: Some people thought it was bush fires, because that's what we (unintelligible) as well here, as you know. A lot of people were confused. It also set off lots of alarms. And I think the fire brigade had to go out to everyone.

SIEGEL: You mean because the sensors were reading it as smoke, they're reading the colloidal substance…

Mr. FRASER: Yes, very fine. It's like talcum powder. So it gets in all through in any room: curtain, windows or whatever, so it's getting into all the air conditioning systems and so forth. So it was causing havoc with the alarms.

SIEGEL: So false alarms. Were there a lot of auto accidents? Were people blinded at the wheel and having…

Mr. FRASER: No, apparently not. It was thick as fog. So at one stage, visibility was round about 500 yards. So it was like an orange reddy fog, so it was really, really strange.

SIEGEL: On the other hand, a lot of flights were canceled.

Mr. FRASER: The airport was badly affected. A lot of flights diverted to Melbourne and Brisbane. And then the dust actually made it up to Brisbane later in the afternoon, I think it was, so they got it right up through there as well.

SIEGEL: Well, why, why should there be such a huge dust storm. Luck of the draw or is there something changing in the Australian climate?

Mr. FRASER: There's a very strong cold front coming through the outback and it continued to lift up the dust during the day and that maintained itself right through the night and when we awoke in Sydney, of course, it was all over the Sydney Basin. And Sydney is a little bit like Los Angeles, it's in a basin. So it tends to trap a lot of the pollutants in a layer and the Sydney Basin is surrounded by mountains to the north, south and west, so it tends to act like a lid anyway, so it caught all the dust particles in that area. And then as the wind picked up during the day, it started to disperse.

SIEGEL: Was everyone coughing yesterday throughout the day in Sydney?

Mr. FRASER: Yes. People with asthma, and I'm included in that, I stayed indoors until it cleared. I didn't want to take a chance.

SIEGEL: Well, Neale Fraser, thank you very much for talking with us about it.

Mr. FRASER: Thanks, Robert.

SIEGEL: Neale Fraser who is the senior forecaster at the Bureau of Meteorology in Sydney, Australia.

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