Dust Storm II

A few weeks ago I said the dust storms here were interesting, let me re-phrase that: The dust storms here suck! The stuff covers everything. It gets in your nose your eyes and your lungs. Your eyelashes and hair (if I had any) looks as if they have turned blond at the tips.

Check out this picture, it has not been altered in any way. That is really the color of the air.

Iraqi Date Groves

Hey everybody check out this video. We did a flight to look at the canals in the province and I got this great video of some of the date palms. They grow many different types of dates in Iraq and some of these types are only grown in Diyala and no other place in the world. I love flying in the helicopters and we got to fly really low with the doors open, it was really awesome!!

Dust Storm

The dust storms over here are really interesting. The wind will come up, and some dust will start to kick up but then it calms down and the dust just hangs in the air until it gets blown out by the next weather front that comes through. The air is thick with dust, you can taste it and feel it on your teeth and you don’t want to even think about what happens when you blow your nose. It looks weird outside too, everything has a grayish red tint and everything just looks eerie. Then the dust will settle and cover everything and there will be blue sky all in the matter of a few hours. The dirt here is as fine as talcum powder and kicks up even when you walk so it gets dusty all of the time.