Dust Storm

I woke up thinking the day was rather overcast which is unusual for spring (by now it's mainly sunny all the time) so I got excited, hoping for one last thunderstorm.  A little later as I was working I noticed that the air tasted sandy...so I looked out the window and realized it wasn't overcast, it was a sandstorm :(  I still haven't got used to the amount of dust we have here.  I'm sure that its taken years off the life of our computers, and I pretty much gave up trying to keep everything dust free (there may or may not be dust tumbleweeds blowing through our apartment).  This storm was caused by a combination of wind and sandstorms in Egypt which made their way to Israel.  Luckily they usually blow over in a day - although this is probably the worst one I've seen yet (we've managed to be away during all the other bad ones over the past year and a bit).  Good thing I decided not to wash the windows yet :)

There is a smokestack in the center of the picture that is perfectly clear in normal conditions -here you can't even see it.  This is the airport runway which was mostly shutdown for obvious reasons!

This one is a bit harder to see, but the buildings in the background are usually very clear.

This is just for reference of nearly the same view (I didn't have one that showed the city in the background) to give an example of what it normally looks like on the beach, year round when the waves aren't high.