Before the Rain, there was the Red Dawn

Picture borrowed from: http://www.towleroad.com/2009/09/red-dawn-sydney-enveloped-in-massive-dust-storm.html

It's almost hard to remember now, but before the week and half of rain hit, there was a 10 month long drought. Those drought conditions mixed with the effects of some earlier floods, and sudden thunder and wind storms that picked up the dried out iron-rich soil. The cumulative effect was a very eerie Red Dawn on Sept. 22nd. People were comparing it to Armageddon -- and somehow I failed to comment on it here.

To tell the truth, we missed the craziest, most intense part of the day; however, we did wake up in the morning to orange light glowing through our blinds. When I went outside, everything was covered with layer of red. After being outdoors for just 5 minutes, I was leaving red footsteps on the rug.

By mid-afternoon, things looked pretty normal again, but you could still feel it in the air. It just felt really heavy. G and I happened to get lost that afternoon while carrying several large bags of groceries -- uphill. (Long story.) When we finally got home tired and out of breath, we desperately reached for a glass of water. The cold water washed down our parched throats, and tasted distinctly of dirt.

The rain let up quite a bit today. I'm hoping we'll be done with all dust and thunder storms soon, and get back to some normal weather soon.