The day Earth became Mars

I was cleaning up my photo library and stumbled across these iPhone pics of the day Earth became Mars.  At least here in Sydney it did.  It was September 23, 2009 and we woke up to the usual radio alarm, ABC 702.  This station actually tells the news.  What they said was something like "The city is red this morning, like Mars".  Thoughts of HG Wells' The War of the Worlds?  Turns out a huge dust storm from inland Australia made it all the way to the eastern coast.  Wow, it was weird, and windy too.  We actually went to work in this, clothes and bags and all surfaces in the house were covered in this fine, red dust.  It was really the colour of the outback.

It was really windy too

This is the sun behind the dust.

Out the front door it was even more incredible.

This was about 7:00am, we were breathing in red dust from inland Australia!

Not a UFO but the headlights of a car

Here's the sun again, trying to get through. It looks eerie but with the wind as well it was like the apocalypse had arrived.