Red dust colors sky and the city, making Sydney look like Mars

The drought is back in a big way, and Mars has dropped in to say hello on the back of the north west wind, aka The Blowtorch, the bushfire-sponsoring wind that comes off the desert a couple of thousand miles away in Australia.

Nobody needed filters to capture these shots. Canberra turned yellow, no surprise, yesterday, now it was our turn. The Sydney Harbor Bridge vanishes into the dust, obscuring the other side of the Harbor. Coogee beach looks like a post nuclear surfing carnival. Outside, the wind’s roaring away through the gum trees as I write. It’s like opera. In one of these shots you can’t even see the Opera House from the other side of Circular Quay, only 100 metres away. People walk across an alien landscape, which looks like NASA had something to do with it. The dust has raised some fears about health, too. It’s early Spring out here, and a few million tons of dust isn’t good for the respiratory system. Asthmatics are being advised to stay indoors. As The Sydney Morning Herald reports, the locals got a bit of a shock seeing the red sky. It can also mean bushfires, which produce this huge red sky at their most dangerous levels. No, this isn’t normal in Australia. Nor is a 20 year drought. Anyone who wants to see climate change in the raw, come and take a gander at this little lot. Desertification is a big, expensive issue in Australia, it’s just that nobody knew the deserts were this portable. The other bit of news is that summer seems to have come by about 3 months early. We’re expecting an even worse bushfire season than last year. It’s so grim it might even revive the Australian film industry.