A gust of wind sweeps over bare soil, kicking up enough dirt and dust to cut visibility to nearly zero, and for drivers, the dust storm seems to come out of nowhere. As the AP reports, such conditions resulted in a pileup on Interstate 70 last week in western Kansas involving dozens of cars and trucks that left eight people dead. Blinding dust on Tuesday also prompted New Mexico's Transportation Department to close a 130-mile stretch of highway. Hazy or dust-darkened skies have recalled the Dust Bowl of the 1930s, when millions of tons of blowing soil buried farms and coated towns across the Great Plains.
Some scientists worry that many motorists don't take them seriously enough. "We have a very low level of public awareness of a dust storm and what damage it can cause," said Daniel Tong, a professor of atmospheric chemistry at George Mason University who's among the authors of a 2023 paper on dust storm deaths. The fatalities Friday near Goodland, Kansas, were the first in the area in a dust storm since 2014, said Jeremy Martin, the National Weather Service meteorologist there. But they came less than a month after an 11-car pileup on I-10 left three people dead, with heavy dust cited as a factor.
Tong and four co-authors concluded in their 2023 paper that there were 232 deaths from "windblown dust events" from 2007 through 2017, far higher than the number recorded by NOAA data. In January, he and four colleagues concluded that the economic damage caused by wind erosion and dust is four times higher than previously calculated, adding up to more than $154 billion a year. Martin said a cold front moved through the area of the pileup after it had been warm and dry for six hours. Winds that reached 70mph kicked up dust that then became trapped in the cold front.
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"It was hard to even keep your eyes open outside because there was so much dust in the air," said Martin. Weather service forecasters also said some of the advice for motorists in a dust storm is counterintuitive. Michael Anand, a NWS meteorologist in Albuquerque, said motorists should pull off the road as safely as possible, turn off all lights, and never use their high beams.
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