Jen's First Sandstorm

"It's a bad one out there," says an elder colleague as he exits the office. "What?" replies Jen, confused at the thought of less than perfect weather in Tel Aviv. "The sandstorm, it's a bad one," he clarifies. Jen runs to the window to see a haze over the city. It's the end of the world!!

Khamsin (with the harsh "H" at the beginning) is a sandstorm produces when winds kick up the sand in Africa (Egypt) and blow them towards the Mediterranean Sea. The sand is then carried thousands of miles until it blows West onto the shores where we found it in Tel Aviv this week.

Because my image of a sandstorm prior to this was either a.) winds blowing sand into your face in the desert or b.) my brother throwing sand at me, I'll explain what it was like: The sky was a yellowish-gray color like something from a movie about the apocalypse, the beach was deserted and few people were outside. (I purposely did not play with the colors or blur on the photo so you could see exactly what it looked like. This is well before sunset. The buildings are .5 miles away)

When you walked outside you were greeted by the finest mist of sand almost unnoticeable except for the grind you start to feel in your teeth and the sand collecting in your shoes. (Think of magic ferry dust.) The sand was most noticeable on the cars which looked like they had just passed under a bridge and sand/cement splatter on them. Before we could pull out of our parking spot we had to turn on the windshield wipers - but instead of water dripping off, the sand was pushed aside. At home our "garden" plants were doing better than we'd expected, but the balcony floor had a light coating of sand.

The temperature was the same and you didn't feel or hear the sand falling, but the eerie color of the sky, the grit in your mouth and the light covering of sand on everything really looked like the end of the world. But don't worry- it is sunny with a high of 75 today. I think we'll be okay.