Blowing sand

Something about this morning's sky didn't look right, but since that's fairly normal, I donned my face mask (with active charcoal cloth filter and HEPA filtration) and biked to class. At 8:01am, my teacher interrupted herself, declared that the smell of earth in the air was distracting her, and closed the curtains on the mini-apocalypse unfolding outside of the window.

Such was my induction to Beijing's first largescale sand/dust storm of the season, a scene that is likely to repeat several times this spring. "Terrifying" was the most common word I heard used to describe the dark sky. I asked what happens when the storms are worse than I experienced today and was told that: 1) more sand particles could swirl around; 2) the air could be yellow instead of grey; 3) yellow sky could be combined with rain, meaning that it would literally be raining yellow mud.

The air cleared somewhat by evening, and as I watched the sun set, its rays reflecting off the haze on the horizon were nearly blinding.