{"id":12696,"date":"2011-10-18T13:29:23","date_gmt":"2011-10-18T18:29:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.survival-spot.com\/survival-blog\/?p=12696"},"modified":"2011-10-24T10:55:39","modified_gmt":"2011-10-24T15:55:39","slug":"texas-turns-red-dust-storm-rolls-through-texas-south-plains","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.survival-spot.com\/survival-blog\/texas-turns-red-dust-storm-rolls-through-texas-south-plains\/","title":{"rendered":"Texas Turns Red: Dust Storm Rolls Through Texas South Plains"},"content":{"rendered":"

Monday’s dust storm in the Lone Star State produced striking images and video of day turning to night.
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LUBBOCK, Texas (AP) — Winds gusting at more than 70 mph churned up a dust storm that roiled through the Texas South Plains during the Monday afternoon commute.<\/p>\n

Dust kicked up by westerly breezes ahead of a strong cold front restricted visibility in Lubbock to about 5 miles all afternoon, said National Weather Service Lubbock meteorologist Matt Ziebell.<\/p>\n

That was nothing compared to the 8,000-foot-high rolling dust cloud that moved through the city just before 6 p.m., dropping visibility to between zero and less than a quarter of a mile, Ziebell said.<\/p>\n

North winds gusting as high as 74 mph had begun forming the dust cloud about 100 miles north of Lubbock around 4:30 p.m., he said.<\/p>\n

“It went from light to dark, just like that,” said Lubbock convenience store clerk Alma Williams. “I’ve never seen anything like it. It really scared me.”<\/p>\n

She said customers who went outside to watch the dirt cloud said they hadn’t seen anything like it, either,<\/p>\n

Lubbock city spokesman Jeff McKito said he was driving home from work when the dust hit. “It was pretty spectacular. Everything just turned black,” he said.<\/p>\n

\"texas

A thick cloud of dust covers everything in sight during a dust storm on Monday. (Credit: Lockerz, Twitter.com\/SFEwingIV)<\/p><\/div>\n

He said cars pulled over and stopped, “but you don’t want to get out of the car in this situation,” he said.<\/p>\n

FAA controllers at Lubbock International Airport had to evacuate the tower and direct air traffic from a backup center on the tower’s ground floor, McKito said. Trees toppled, roofs lost shingles and a small cargo plane at the airport was overturned, he said.<\/p>\n

No injuries were reported from the dust cloud reminiscent of those shown in Dust Bowl photos from the late 1930s.<\/p>\n

The dust cloud was yet another byproduct of the persistent drought in West Texas, Ziebell said.<\/p>\n

The U.S. Drought Monitor map released Oct. 11 showed much of Texas, including the South Plains, were still experiencing “exceptional drought” — the most severe category.<\/p>\n

In an Oct. 6 statement, the National Weather Service in Lubbock reported that there was a “high likelihood” that 2011 could be the driest on record across the South Plains.<\/p>\n

[Via Weather.com<\/a>]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Monday’s dust storm in the Lone Star State produced striking images and video of day turning to night.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[392,195],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12696","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-natural-disasters","category-news"],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.survival-spot.com\/survival-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12696","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.survival-spot.com\/survival-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.survival-spot.com\/survival-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.survival-spot.com\/survival-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.survival-spot.com\/survival-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12696"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.survival-spot.com\/survival-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12696\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.survival-spot.com\/survival-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12696"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.survival-spot.com\/survival-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12696"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.survival-spot.com\/survival-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12696"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}