Imagine the sort of morning where the windows shuttered or curtained or covered, you wake up at the squeal of your alarm.
But instead of finding the sun, or the sort of cloudy, gloomy day that some detest and that some gladly welcome, you see a different sort of sky. A dystopic sky, apocalyptic not in the vein of ‘The Handmaid’s Tale’ but more aptly likened to Cormac McCarthy’s post-apocalyptic ‘The Road.’
A sky with the orangish glow of a city burdened by wildfires or hunkering down in preparation for its arrival. The sort of eerie, disturbing look one expects from a Los Angeles or San Francisco in the midst of drought and easily-sparked fires.
But instead, this sort of image popped up across the Iberian peninsula on Tuesday morning, 15 March.
Known as a calima in Spain, the sandstorm arrived in force and swiftly covered cars, buildings, parks, etc. in thick red dust. The air quality across Spain substantially decreased in the wake of the calima’s arrival, making it significantly harder to breathe.
A calima forms during a Saharan sandstorm from a rush of dusty and warm wind which then crosses toward Europe.
Because of the increased presence of dirt in the air, residents around Madrid prepared themselves for a muddy rainfall.
The dust cloud made its way to different parts of Europe as well, although the Iberian peninsula certainly received the brunt of it. It made its way to the British Isles, northern France, and even to the Balkans.
While the images harkening from the Swiss Alps, the Balkans, the British Isles, and France were not nearly as apocalyptic, people still awakened on Wednesday, 17 March to a slightly different tint to the sky.
Yet alas, amid the rapidly changing climate situation, this latest storm made less fuss.
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