Suggest OddsRare Orange Dust Storm Clouds Sydney
Sept 24, 2009 -- A huge orange dust storm whirled through Sydney, Australia yesterday, " diverting international flights, disrupting ferries, and prompting a spike in emergency calls from people suffering breathing problems."
Although images and video of the storm were stunning, no serious injuries were reported, which isn’t too surprising.
Dust storms are rare in Sydney. In the US, the odds a person will be injured by a dust storm in a year are 1 in 8,743,000. And the odds a person in the US will be killed by one are even lower 1 in 459,000,000.
Australians may have taken these odds to heart as hordes of amateur photographers ignored health warnings to capture images of the storm, outnumbering members of the mainstream media and giving a boost to citizen journalism.
But the biggest boost may have gone to car wash owners who reported today having lines of customers, some of whom waited more than an hour to rinse the orange memories away.
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