When I said I was off out with my new camera no way was I expecting my day to turn out the way it did. My lift turned up just as I was shutting down the computer. The intention was to drive up the coast, find an isolated stretch of beach and settle down to an afternoon of seascape painting. Funny how sometimes days just don’t pan out the way they are supposed too.
By the time we left the weather was dry and sunny but a little chilly and the wind was beginning to rise. As we left the town and headed North along the coast road we could see a pinkish cloud swirling around in the distance, at first we thought it was the haar (sea mist) coming inland with the low afternoon sun shining through it. Realisation slowly dawned; we were driving into a dust storm!! I sat there in disbelief. The nearer to it we drove, the more bizarre it looked. I have lived here for twenty years and NEVER seen any thing like this before.
These country roads are narrow and full of bends; visibility isn’t good at the best of times. We turned a corned and were plunged into what looked like a blizzard, except instead of fine white snow, it was fine pink dust, we couldn’t see a thing. We crept along trying to find somewhere to turn the car but we had to stop, we literally couldn’t see the front of the car. We made out the headlights of another car moving toward us, fortunately the other driver saw us just in time to stop and avoid collision. We managed to turn and slowly crept out the way we came in. The wind was battering the car and making it shudder, dust was piling up in what looked like little sand dunes all along the side of the road, and from inside the car with all doors and windows closed we were breathing in fine dust. This was undoubtedly one of the weirdest experiences of my life; never in a million years did I expect to be stuck in a dust storm while driving along a Scottish country coast road.
Leaving this dust storm was as sudden as entering it, we turned a corner and it was gone, blue skys, fluffy clouds and beautiful landscapes lay before us.
The wind was still there but the dust just disappeared. Once inland and back on the main road we could see the dust storm swirling around over the fields and down toward the coast.
After heading futher north for a while we thought it was safe to head in toward the coast again, we could see the dust still swirling but we seemed to be out of its range. The intention was to sit and paint but even away from the dust the winds were too strong to be able to sit out any where. I think to sit out in that was to risk being blown out to sea.
We did manage, camera in hand, to stand at the edge of the lane overlooking Boddin bay and watch the dust still swirling oround the other side of the bay.
It was being swept out to sea and covered the bay with a dusky pink mist. From a safe distance it looked mysterious and even beautiful, but the whole thing was very strange.
It seemed as if the fields that were ploughed were losing their top soil but the fields that had corn stubble or other crops remained intact.
I’ve no idea why this happened. We have had a very warm, dry September, but I never in my wildest dreams did I expect this.
This area is one of the best, most productive agricultural areas in the whole of the UK. Our land has good rich fertile soil; we normally have higher annual rainfall than the rest of the UK, so I have no idea what caused this.
I did google ‘’Scottish Dust Storm’’ (and sand storm ) and the only link I found is this one, an interesting phenomena from the seventeenth century.
http://www.forestry.gov.uk/website/forestry.nsf/byunique/infd-76qjv6
