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2005-04-28 Arabia
Iraqi Desert Sandstorm Attacks US Base - In 5 Cool Pix
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Posted by .com 2005-04-28 05:10|| || Front Page|| [11127 views since 2007-05-07]  Top

#1 Yep - that's what they look like: a wall of sand advancing on you like doom itself. Awesome, heh.
Posted by .com 2005-04-28 5:13:30 AM||   2005-04-28 5:13:30 AM|| Front Page Top

#2 ..I only saw one of those during my time in the KSA, but that was enough.

Mike
Posted by Mike Kozlowski 2005-04-28 7:31:04 AM||   2005-04-28 7:31:04 AM|| Front Page Top

#3 Does that mean the shield wall is coming down and the Fremen will soon pour in?
Posted by rkb 2005-04-28 7:33:34 AM||   2005-04-28 7:33:34 AM|| Front Page Top

#4 Ladies and Germs, thats what they call a "shmal" if I remember my Arabic correctly. We attacked through one of those back in the first Gulf war. The Iraqis though our gunflashes from the M1's were lightning from the storm until their "antenna tanks" started blowing up. We loved the first shot kills on thermals from over 1km away.

I remember one of the guys in my track said "Oh Man, this looks like God is pissed".
Posted by OldSpook 2005-04-28 7:34:08 AM||   2005-04-28 7:34:08 AM|| Front Page Top

#5 OS - yeah, that's the word I heard in SA. Mebbe shamal, too long ago.

In '92, Mike?

I was on the 9th floor, in '92, of the Tower Bldg, Core Area, Dhahran. Looking out the windows as that thing descended upon us was, well, it looked like the End of the World, lol! It was higher than the 10-story Tower building - and I'd guess the one in these pix isn't quite that high. What's fun is having a heavy fog as one comes in - you get a coating of 1/4 to 1/2 inch of mud all over everything outside. Everything. It's a trip cuz no one has an ice scraper, the perfect 1st pass removal tool, lol!
Posted by .Wheager Ebbineter4425 2005-04-28 7:49:57 AM||   2005-04-28 7:49:57 AM|| Front Page Top

#6 Get these in thy Valley(Phoenix)every once in awhile,damn scary when you're crusing the inter state at 60mph and slam into a wall of brown air.
Posted by raptor 2005-04-28 8:07:53 AM||   2005-04-28 8:07:53 AM|| Front Page Top

#7 when you're crusing the inter state at 60mph and slam into a wall of brown air.

Sounds like driving through Cleveland.
Posted by Robert Crawford  2005-04-28 8:25:08 AM|| [http://www.kloognome.com/]  2005-04-28 8:25:08 AM|| Front Page Top

#8 OMG. It looks like a movie!
Posted by Seafarious  2005-04-28 9:23:36 AM||   2005-04-28 9:23:36 AM|| Front Page Top

#9 #4 Ladies and Germs, thats what they call a "shmal" if I remember my Arabic correctly.

I thought it was "shahel" from my long ago travels in North Africa, Chad and Mauritania. That was 10 years ago and I still find dust in my clothes from that experience. But the neato part to this story was the BBC using photos taken by a jarhead gunny who happens to be female.
Posted by Jack is Back!  2005-04-28 10:51:10 AM||   2005-04-28 10:51:10 AM|| Front Page Top

#10 In Lubbock Texas, this is a good day, people cook out on days like this, the rest of the time its really ugly out. I've seen it snow during storms like this....and people think West Texas is beautiful...yeah, in your rear view mirror.
Posted by Live to Ride 2005-04-28 2:14:27 PM||   2005-04-28 2:14:27 PM|| Front Page Top

#11 There may be an element of myth to the desert part of this. I've been out in Australia's Great Sandy Desert in high winds and while you get a painful sandblasting, you don't get choking dust. In fact there is almost no dust. The dust requires disturbance of the ground by agriculture. So these kinds of sand/duststorms are a feature of marginal agricultural areas and not deserts (where there is no agriculture).
Posted by phil_b 2005-04-28 5:08:27 PM||   2005-04-28 5:08:27 PM|| Front Page Top

#12 I do hope some terrorist was scouting the base, only to turn around and see the giant wall of sand.
Posted by Charles  2005-04-28 5:28:15 PM||   2005-04-28 5:28:15 PM|| Front Page Top

#13 phil b: not deserts huh? So all the KSA stories are lies?? Loose, silty sand is all that's required, in the right situations, and Saooodi has it just like other areas. Your comment about marginal farming (topsoil loss and drought) are correct, but all they do is replicate the great f*&king desert conditions. I've seen something similar (smaller tho') east of San Diego, near Imperial Cty line...it's the desert, man..
Posted by Frank G  2005-04-28 5:29:47 PM||   2005-04-28 5:29:47 PM|| Front Page Top

#14 LOL L to R!

Juster a littel Maria with Tess there.
Posted by Suzzane Flushete 2005-04-28 5:54:33 PM||   2005-04-28 5:54:33 PM|| Front Page Top

#15 Frank, having just researched the subject I can confirm my observations were correct. Dust storms do not originate in undisturbed desert like SA's Empty Quarter the world largest sand desert. They originate in arid agricultural areas such as found in parts of northern SA or areas that have been disturbed by other causes eg, mining. Here is a long but interesting article on the subject.
Posted by phil_b 2005-04-28 7:04:55 PM||   2005-04-28 7:04:55 PM|| Front Page Top

#16 Sheesh. I'm thinking things are not quite so simple. I wrote modeling software for the oil & gas industry for over 10 years. Even history-matching to at least 6 decimal places was no guarantee that the model would perform accurately over the lifespan of a field. Same for thermal modeling - there were always unknown and unanticipated factors which came into play after some unexpected threshold was crossed. Beware over-reliance on models is my point.

First, I offer 3 photos I took in SA during the Gulf War, 3-26-03. Use this map link for distances and visualization. The same sandstorm front that brought military operations to a total halt in Iraq was wreaking the same havoc even as far away as the Dhahran area of Saudi - and that's 400 miles from Dhahran (and I don't have any idea how far South of me that it extended) just to the Point of Departure in Kuwait, let's call it Umm Qasr, and easily 700 miles to Baghdad... Think this was caused by farmers? Bedu farmers? Really? It moved Northwest to Southeast. I can assure you that there is very little between Dhahran and Buraydah... Certainly not substantial farming. Think about it some more...

The Al Rashid Petroleum Centre. I had an office here when I wasn't at Aramco.

Looking down the adjacent road, aka Doha Rd, although it actually has no official name.

Looking down the private road between my apartment in Al Bustan Village and the Al Rashid PC / Doha Rd.

You will note that the visual range is just about 100 yds.

Regards the article, let's say they know what they know, but that may not be everything. Rummy said it better:

The Unknown
As we know,
There are known knowns.
There are things we know we know.
We also know
There are known unknowns.
That is to say
We know there are some things
We do not know.
But there are also unknown unknowns,
The ones we don't know
We don't know.

—Feb. 12, 2002, Department of Defense news briefing

I will issue a memo to the Bedu to immediately cease and desist their farming activities in the desert outside the Dhahran - Dammam - Khobar triangle... and to stop scuffing with their feet when they walk. Obviously they caused this, this, this little dust-up.
;-)
Posted by .com 2005-04-28 7:44:29 PM||   2005-04-28 7:44:29 PM|| Front Page Top

#17 BTW, this is the petroleum center you heard about in the "Al Khobar Masscre" story where 21 infidels were slaughtered. The first two victims were security guards at Al Rashid Petroleum Centre. At the other end of the road in DSC00252, the third pic (looking in the opposite direction, about a mile behind the image POV), is where the high-rent Oasis Compound, where they ran to and did most of their killing, is located. Just background. As you were.
Posted by .com 2005-04-28 7:48:58 PM||   2005-04-28 7:48:58 PM|| Front Page Top

#18 jeez, PD - how can your real world experience bear up to extended research? I'm perplexed!
Posted by Frank G  2005-04-28 8:06:37 PM||   2005-04-28 8:06:37 PM|| Front Page Top

#19 btw - last two are 404 Verboten!
Posted by Frank G  2005-04-28 8:10:12 PM||   2005-04-28 8:10:12 PM|| Front Page Top

#20 Working now - had to change the .JPG to .jpg.

A Unix box.
Posted by .com 2005-04-28 8:13:57 PM||   2005-04-28 8:13:57 PM|| Front Page Top

#21 .com, when you were doing that modelling, did you account for Chaos theory? My brother has been doing a lot of work on weather forecasting with the Meterology Dept. at his university, and says Chaos is the only thing that lets him come close.
Posted by  trailing wife 2005-04-28 9:58:52 PM||   2005-04-28 9:58:52 PM|| Front Page Top

#22 Wheager -
Jan-Jun 95, Prince Sultan AB at Al Kharj. One of our Saudi liason NCOs said that the shaamal was God's way of getting your attention.

Robert-
Only on 77 going past LTV Steel.*S*

Mike
Posted by Mike Kozlowski 2005-04-28 10:15:44 PM||   2005-04-28 10:15:44 PM|| Front Page Top

#23 tw - The time period was 70's-80's. The maturity of Chaos theory, as might be used in O&G modeling, was certainly neither mature nor accepted by the hardcore "These are the purse-strings of our company - don't fuck around!" management of the O&G giants.

You wrote code using accepted mathematical constants and formula and, customarily, your model had to successfully mirror known data, called history-matching. You lived by the simulation texts and your mathematical function references and company code libraries. What we would've given for an online compendium, such as the AMS Series. Sigh.

There was, also, the Not Invented Here rule. At Mobil they didn't use the same approaches as they did at SOHio or ARCO, for example. And I contracted at all of them at one time or another.

No, where $billions$ were concerned, it was strictly accepted / proven hard math, with each company building a library of "proven" routines which you strung together, modified, rewrote, etc, as needed. Eventually, every company had it's own proprietary models. The 6 (at that time) Saudi Royal Fields were modeled by Mobil - they had the Royal Contract, lol! Everybody developed custom 2D & 3D routines (matrix solvers) to calculate all sorts of goodies, such as the delta (change) of temp or pressure or viscosity between "cells" of the matrix in succeeding timesteps. Usually, the data requirements exceeded the computer's memory capacity, so you could only process N steps before you had to write a "restart" file. clear everything out, reload from the restart, and proceed another N timesteps. Rinse. Repeat.

The original Cray-1 only had .5MB of main memory, for example. I can tell you converting code between machines, with different word lengths, math libraries (there were even bugs in logarithm tables, etc, - a blasphemy, lol!), etc was a real trip.

I know I've over-killed my answer. Sigh. Sorry, lol!
Posted by .com 2005-04-28 10:41:01 PM||   2005-04-28 10:41:01 PM|| Front Page Top

19:05 3dc
23:59 Sobiesky
23:56 BooBoo
23:52 Mark E.
23:48 Sobiesky
23:44 Kalle (kafir forever)
23:41 Frank G
23:34 CrazyFool
23:30 Frank G
23:29 Barbara Skolaut
23:29 Frank G
23:28 Sobiesky
23:27 Justrand
23:17 OldSpook
23:16 Frank G
23:16 Frank G
23:13 Frank G
23:10 Sobiesky
23:09 OldSpook
23:01 Frank G
22:58 Frank G
22:53 .com
22:51 Glavising Slack5995
22:46 Zhang Fei









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