Avalon Dust Storm - 23rd September 2009
Photos: Stephen Fitzgerald

The storm, which blacked the mining town of Broken Hill on Tuesday before sweeping east, was caused by a major cold front whipping up dust from the drought-stricken hinterland.

Gale force winds - measuring in excess of 90kmph by noon on Wednesday carried an estimated 5 million tonnes of dust, and spread across NSW and Queensland, as far north as Cairns. The dust storms stripped valuable topsoil from farmlands. At one stage up to 75,000 tonnes of dust, per hour, was blown across Sydney and dumped in the Pacific Ocean.

The blanket of dust stretched for thousands of miles across the eastern states and is unprecedented with the worst previous dust storm more than 70 years ago.

Just to get a grip on the global pollution problem, the 5 million tonnes of dust that blanketed the eastern states on Wednesday is equivalent to the same amount of C02, resulting from human activity, that we release into the atmosphere every 6 hours i.e. Humans produce 8 thousand million tonnes ( 8,000,000,000 ) of carbon based pollutants every year - GASP!!! - If CO2 was red instead of clear maybe we would get seriouse about cleaning things up.... Double GASP!!!

View of Little Avalon at 8:00am

Avalon Beach Tidal Pool at 8:10am

Avalon Beach (South End) at 8:15am