{"id":320,"date":"2009-02-11T10:04:00","date_gmt":"2009-02-11T10:04:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thevollmerfamily.com\/MajorMom\/2009\/02\/shamal-101.html"},"modified":"2017-01-06T21:36:04","modified_gmt":"2017-01-07T04:36:04","slug":"shamal-101","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/thevollmerfamily.com\/MajorMom\/2009\/02\/shamal-101.html","title":{"rendered":"Shamal 101"},"content":{"rendered":"

I sorta figured this would happen while I’m here.<\/p>\n

“What’s that?”<\/p>\n

A shamal.<\/p>\n

“What the heck is a shamal<\/em>?”<\/p>\n

Well, let’s define it here<\/a>. It’s a strong northerly wind that picks up dust from Syria and Jordan and carries it all the way down the Arabian peninsula.<\/p>\n

And it’s shamal-ing<\/em> right now as I type this. The winds are gusting to 40 knots from the northwest, and the dust came down all the way from Syria — we watched it on the satellite! I even saw the wall of dust towards the northwest minutes before the winds started here, but I was in a no-photography area so I wasn’t able to capture it for you.<\/p>\n

(Side note: I have to give public kudos to the forecast team in the U.S. and here at my base for the great job they did predicting its onset here. They said it would arrive by noon, and it got here at 11:55am!)<\/p>\n

I have a couple pictures of what shamal vs. non-shamal conditions look like here, but they didn’t turn out really well. I won’t include them here, but I wish I could have captured how it looks here better.<\/p>\n

It looks like fog. That “you can’t see your hand in front of your face” kind of fog. If you’re standing inside looking out into this stuff out the window it looks like a brownish-yellow fog. But the wind is howling…and if you inhale too deeply, you start coughing. If you breathe the air without a cover over your mouth for too long, you feel the grit on your teeth. It smells sort of like chalkboard chalk. Do you remember clapping together blackboard erasers when you were younger? And inhaling that dust for too long? That’s the sensation.<\/p>\n

You feel the grit on your hands, in your hair, and on the surface of your skin. I stood outside for 5 minutes waiting for a bus from my duty location back to my dorms and could feel how dirty my hair was in that short time. Again, remember how chalk dust feels on your hands after you’ve dusted off the excess. A fine grit.<\/p>\n

If your eyes aren’t covered, the dust gets into the eyes and it’s difficult to see as your eyes get watery. I have goggles for my eyes and am carrying around a small towel to cover my mouth.<\/p>\n

I was talking to a British fighter pilot today right when the storm started and in a typical British no-holds-barred fashion, he gave gory details about where on our person we’d be finding shamal dust remnants for days after the event ends. I can’t wait.<\/p>\n

It becomes hazardous to do things outside in these conditions. As if the winds and reduced visibilities aren’t enough of a problem, the respiratory hazards associated with prolonged inhaling of this dust can be a problem too.<\/p>\n

Even though I’m inside right now typing this (I am usually outside where the WiFi is stronger), there’s still a layer of dust settling on my keyboard, and the table on which my laptop is sitting.<\/p>\n

A shamal event wreaked havoc on the coalition invasion of Iraq in 2003. For you weather weenies, here’s a paper<\/a> about the meteorology of the shamal that impacted the “march to Baghdad” in late March ’03. There are arguments to this day about the amount of advantage coalition forces were able to gain from the duststorm, but I’m not going there.<\/p>\n

So it’ll be interesting to see how I feel when this is all done, and how long before I blow all the dust out of my nose, clean it out of my ears, and wash it out of my hair.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I sorta figured this would happen while I’m here. “What’s that?” A shamal. “What the heck is a shamal?” Well, let’s define it here. It’s a strong northerly wind that picks up dust from Syria and Jordan and carries it all the way down the Arabian peninsula. And it’s shamal-ing right now as I type […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false,"jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true},"categories":[1],"tags":[13,63,618],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5ycQ0-5a","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":323,"url":"http:\/\/thevollmerfamily.com\/MajorMom\/2009\/02\/my-first-attempt-at-a-video-shamal.html","url_meta":{"origin":320,"position":0},"title":"My First Attempt at a VIDEO: Shamal","date":"13 February 09","format":false,"excerpt":"This is my attempt to share a video I took about 1\/2 hour after the first wall of dust and wind hit us here on the 11th. Visibility was about 1\/10 of a mile and the winds were from the northwest at 35-40 knots. It takes a REALLY long time\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"air force reserves\"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":321,"url":"http:\/\/thevollmerfamily.com\/MajorMom\/2009\/02\/dust-storm-day-2-wheres-the-pledge.html","url_meta":{"origin":320,"position":1},"title":"Dust Storm, Day 2: Wheres the Pledge?","date":"12 February 09","format":false,"excerpt":"The dust storm continues. It isn't as windy as yesterday, only gusting up to about 25 instead of 35 knots. But the chalky goodness is still flooding down from Syria and Iraq.I'm usually the first to admit that I haven't truly forecast the weather in a really long time and\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"air force reserves\"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":339,"url":"http:\/\/thevollmerfamily.com\/MajorMom\/2009\/04\/things-i-wont-miss-about-this-place.html","url_meta":{"origin":320,"position":2},"title":"Things I Won’t Miss About This Place","date":"10 April 09","format":false,"excerpt":"Don't get me wrong, I'd rather be here than Bagram or Balad. The trips off base were great and I'm glad I took the risk to venture out there. 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But I persist...things are well enough. I pulled a table and chair behind the giant wooden film screen, so I'm mostly blocked from the wind.I'm getting ready for my replacement to arrive at the\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"air force reserves\"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":3546,"url":"http:\/\/thevollmerfamily.com\/MajorMom\/2015\/01\/housekeeping.html","url_meta":{"origin":320,"position":5},"title":"Housekeeping…","date":"01 January 15","format":false,"excerpt":"I'm trying to clean up some of the widgets (stuff on the right) on my blog. Pardon the construction dust -- especially with the \"archive\" widget. The one I had used for years is no longer and I'm trying to find a new one. In the meantime, enjoy fresh new\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.sparklecleaningforyou.biz\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/04\/housekeeping.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]}],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/thevollmerfamily.com\/MajorMom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/320"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/thevollmerfamily.com\/MajorMom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/thevollmerfamily.com\/MajorMom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/thevollmerfamily.com\/MajorMom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/thevollmerfamily.com\/MajorMom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=320"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/thevollmerfamily.com\/MajorMom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/320\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4912,"href":"http:\/\/thevollmerfamily.com\/MajorMom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/320\/revisions\/4912"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/thevollmerfamily.com\/MajorMom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=320"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/thevollmerfamily.com\/MajorMom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=320"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/thevollmerfamily.com\/MajorMom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=320"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}