How do dust storms form?

Dust storms — and their lingering effects — can be hazardous for several reasons: A dust storm’s initial wall of dust and debris can arrive suddenly and can catch people by surprise. Dust storms can make it difficult to see when you’re driving a car and can lead to car accidents. Dust in the air can cause serious problems for airplanes.

You might be asking “How does a dust storm form?”

Dust storms are facilitated by the processes of saltation and suspension, processes that move soil from one place and deposit it in another. As a strong wind moves over a dry and dusty or sandy terrain, the larger dust or sand particles will first vibrate.

Those strong winds whipped up dust in central Utah and then the unthinkable happened: Eight people died in chain-reaction collisions on I-15 involving at least 20 vehicles.

In the Sahara Desert, where sand covers the land, sandstorms are the more preferred term since here the wind blows up huge volumes of sand from the desert surface. Sand is coarser than the finer dust particles, which means sandstorms are more devastating in nature than dust storms.

May cause coughing and spread dust. A dust storm, also called sandstorm, is a meteorological phenomenon common in arid and semi-arid regions. Dust storms arise when a gust front or other strong wind blows loose sand and dirt from a dry surface.

Why is a dust storm a suspension?

As they repeatedly strike the ground, they loosen and break off smaller particles of dust which then begin to travel in suspension. At wind speeds above that which causes the smallest to suspend, there will be a population of dust grains moving by a range of mechanisms : suspension, saltation and creep.

Why can’t we say that dust is a suspension?

You can not say that it is a colloid because the common characteristic of a colloid is sticky like lotions and gels; 2. You can not say that it is a suspension because if it is, we should be able to identify easily the solid particles in the air which is the dust; 3.