By Australian standards, where continental-scale dust storms arise from time to time, the storm the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA’s Aqua satellite observed on January 17, 2010, was small. And yet, this small storm clouded the sky for hundreds of kilometers from east to west. The tan cloud of wind-blown dust blows north in wispy strands shaped by the wind. The dust appears to have originated from dry lakebeds in northern South Australia near the Queensland border (visible in the large image).
NASA image courtesy the MODIS Rapid Response Team at NASA GSFC. Caption by Holli Riebeek.
