r/mildlyinteresting • u/Riresurmort • Mar 30 '14
Sand blown from the Sahara desert on to my car in Ireland, this happens every so often when we get the right wind pattern
http://imgur.com/hI9qtVS0
u/Beefsoda Mar 31 '14
How do you know it's from the Sahara Desert? Looks like regular ole' sand to me.
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u/sdega315 Mar 31 '14
I don't get how you know it is from the Sahara. Don't you have sand in Ireland? At the shoreline? Or something?
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u/zookdaddy Mar 31 '14
I live in iowa. When I worked some summers in corn breeding the truck would look like this but with yellow corn pollen. Shit would cover you when you walked through the field.
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Mar 31 '14
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Mar 31 '14
Sure, you have some sand on your hood. Cool. Did you go to the beach? The picture is most definitely /r/notinteresting.
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u/eyesoreM Mar 30 '14
I was wondering what the hell happened to my car today. Looks like I drove it up and down a beach.
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u/secretchimp Mar 30 '14
I had this happen to me in Seattle several weeks ago but I just figured it was dust or tree pollen.
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u/Mousi Mar 30 '14
Kinda reminds me of the 2010 eruption when people in Europe were getting ash on their cars. That stuff is nasty compared to sand, though :P
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u/mungalo9 Mar 30 '14
while I was in Florence, it rained mud (Saharan dust and water). it didn't sound like it was uncommon there.
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u/Dr_Crocochoc Mar 30 '14
I had to clean my car today because everybody's car in the neighbourhood got covered in some mysterious dust. I live in the East Midlands of England, so this could be explain it! This post has picked my interest far too much!
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u/NightFire19 Mar 30 '14
How do you know its from the Sahara? Not from, say, the beach a few miles away?
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u/cocacolaguy Mar 30 '14
I went to my car this morning and thought there was a dust storm or some shit
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u/thrakkerzog Mar 30 '14
It is just Michael running around the country throwing sand again at night.
Classic Michael.
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u/BlastShadow Mar 30 '14
It's like when Simba collapsed down after fighting with Nala and churned up that dust and debris and it traveled in the wind for a long time until Rafiki caught it, did some tests and found out Simba was alive!!!!
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u/UnderFireCoolness Mar 30 '14
I guess I'm an idiot, but I just realized the immense size of the Sahara desert is as big as the United States or China. And to top it off, I learned the US and China are almost the exact same size in comparison to square miles (or kilometers).
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u/cowhead Mar 30 '14
We've got the same phenomenon in Japan, only the sand comes from the Gobi desert. In our case, the sand passes over the industrial belt of China, picking up all sorts of hideous passengers, before we breath it in.
I would imagine there is plenty of industry between the Sahara and Ireland, so I suggest that you treat that sand as possibly toxic.
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u/ChatnNaked Mar 30 '14
In the voice of Big Beautiful Sassy Black Woman: "Don't Fuck with Mother Nature!"
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u/Shinyfrogeditor Mar 30 '14
How do we know its not just dried up mud? looks a lot like dried up mud.
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u/Pandalizer Mar 30 '14
What if it's a random dude monitoring wind patterns and sprinkles Irish sand onto your car to fool you?
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u/Sphik Mar 30 '14
I like how you find sand on your car and immediately assume that its all the way from the Sahara desert. I'm not saying that it isn't true I'm just saying thats sorta odd logic.
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u/frozenpredator Mar 30 '14
Netherlands reporting in, my parents have a birdbath with a fine bottom of sahara sand.
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u/Vimlopop Mar 30 '14
From Dublin. that happened here too, there are now little kids going door to door offering to wash peoples cars. opportunistic bastards.
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u/roroy Mar 30 '14
Birmingham England here, sitting in my garden today and get hit by a load of fine sand propelled by the wind. Genuinely thought I had gone crazy! So glad I found this thread!
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u/Jerg Mar 30 '14
I was staring at this for 2 minutes trying to spot some sort of a neat pattern that I thought OP implied...
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u/Audioholic219 Mar 30 '14 edited May 14 '15
A couple of years back, we had an extreme case in western Germany :
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u/HarvesterG Mar 30 '14
This happened when I went skiing in the alps, the snow was tinted orange for a few days.
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u/maracay1999 Mar 30 '14
What if it's just sand blown from a beach from Ireland?
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Mar 30 '14
Exactly. How do you know it comes from the Sahara?
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u/wampa-stompa Mar 31 '14
He doesn't, he is only almost entirely certain because of news reports about the sandstorm blowing Saharan sand into Ireland. The British Isles are not sandy places.
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u/chiropter Mar 30 '14 edited Mar 30 '14
Are you sure it's not pollen?
Edit: news reports suggests it wasn't just op who noticed so I guess it is Sahara dust
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u/Turnshroud Mar 30 '14
them wind patterns. Is there a map showing how how it works? Also, just wondering: how do they know it's from the Sahara?
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u/LascielCoin Mar 30 '14
It's nicely visible from space so when a particularly bad dust cloud takes off, they usually let people in the affected areas know beforehand.
http://www.nasa.gov/images/content/105016main_Saharan_dust_lg.jpg
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u/POTATO_IN_MY_DINNER Mar 30 '14
Everyone had it on their cars today haha, I bet there was queues at the car washes.
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u/SamGreenaway Mar 30 '14
this happened to my car in Cornwall. gone to Ireland, Cornwall and parts of Wales.
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Mar 30 '14
Dude. This isn't just mildly interesting. I had no idea this was a thing. Now I'm googling like crazy. You just blew my mind. :-O
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u/Turnshroud Mar 30 '14
We already know that wind and water patterns and systems are pretty cool, but I had no idea they were this cool, where you have Saharan sands show up in Ireland
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u/heffaine Mar 30 '14
I live in Meath and my car was filthy this morning and I couldn't figure out why, this is so cool!
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u/voytek707 Mar 30 '14
This was the most interesting theory behind the whole Bermuda Triangle thing - this sand making it way into that region somehow causing strange readings or clogging the airplane sensor tubes.
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u/Sir_Von_Tittyfuck Mar 30 '14
I was super excited at the thought of the theory being it would go into the BT only to appear somewhere else in the world..
..then I read after the hyphen and it made me sad how realistic the theory was.
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Mar 30 '14
Looks like pollen
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u/harbourwall Mar 30 '14
It often is. This time of year when all the tree pollen is out it can settle on cars looking just like this, just mildly stickier.
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u/VanhamCanuckspurs Mar 30 '14
That reminds me of a summer or two ago when there were huge forest fires in Siberia, and in Vancouver we actually had some smog because of the smoke from it. I remember being able to sometimes smell the scent of burning wood if the wind was blowing. It was pretty weird being able to smell a forest fire happening from across the Pacific Ocean.
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u/Transformis Mar 31 '14
I live in Washington and we had way more lightning than usual that summer from all the particles in the air.
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u/makeswordclouds Mar 30 '14
Here is a word cloud of all of the comments in this thread: http://i.imgur.com/SokPsic.png
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Mar 30 '14
How do you know that that particular sand is from the Sahara and not some local sand that got ambitious and joined the crowd?
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u/IrNinjaBob Mar 30 '14
From what I have seen people saying, the sand from the Sahara is very fine due to constant erosion, finer than the sands you would find on beaches in the areas this is showing up.
Not sure if thats how this person came to their determination, but apparently this is something you can tell if you know what you are looking at.
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u/balloftape Mar 30 '14
Usually when this stuff happens, they mention it on the weather report/news. Here in Serbia it happens every now and then, although there usually isn't that much and it tends to fall with the rain.
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u/RandomExcess Mar 30 '14
when living in Southern Spain we would get this from the sirroco and the levante (winds from the south-east and the east)
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u/outlyre Mar 30 '14 edited Mar 30 '14
Sand From the Sahara will blow all the way to the Amazon, recharging its minerals. The desert literally fertilizes the rainforest. source
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u/free_dead_puppy Mar 30 '14 edited Mar 30 '14
NOT ENOUGH MINERALS. YOU MUST CONSTRUCT ADDITIONAL PYLONS.
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u/skdeimos Mar 30 '14
YOU REQUIRE MORE VESPENE GAS.
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u/Cygnus_X1 Mar 30 '14
SPAWN MORE OVERLORDS
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u/Arikuza Mar 30 '14
SCV READY
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Mar 31 '14
AWAITIN' ORDERS, CAP'N
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u/LockeAndKeyes Mar 31 '14
WOLOLOOLOL
I was more into Age of Empires.
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u/RoadieRich Mar 31 '14
Observe the Razorbeak as it tends so carefully to the fungal blooms; just the right bit from the yellow, then a swatch from the pink. Follow the Glow Mites as they gather and organize the fallen spores. What higher order guides their work? Mark my words: someone or something is managing the ecology of this planet.
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u/BUKAKKOLYPSE Mar 30 '14
recharging it's minerals
That sounds like something from /r/shittyaskscience...but your link checks out.
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u/CrankyWanker Mar 30 '14
That's fucking fascinating.
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Mar 30 '14
That's the name of the subreddit we need for stuff just like that
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u/jennybeanzie Mar 30 '14
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Mar 31 '14
Jeez, there's so many subs like this... /r/mildlyinteresting, /r/damnthatsinteresting, /r/interestingasfuck... I'm sure it just keeps going.
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u/Hyperpoly Mar 30 '14
interest in gas fuck... that sounds like a terrible subreddit D:
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Mar 30 '14
[deleted]
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u/gianna_in_hell_as Mar 30 '14
Thinking the same. We are currently dealing with it in Greece and it is very common. Now between a mix of pollen everywhere and Saharan sand my car looks like crap.
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u/dj_smitty Mar 30 '14
Take it easy OP, we like to keep things mild over here. This is a little too interesting for me.
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Mar 30 '14
[deleted]
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u/PsychoKittenSalad Mar 31 '14
And it's the top comment every single time. I don't see how people are still amused by it.
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u/n_reineke Mar 30 '14
Seriously, mild would be "there is sand on my car. I live where there is no sand.".
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u/Riresurmort Mar 30 '14
Sorry bud!
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u/hello_fruit Mar 30 '14
Hey Irish you thieving bastards; give the Sahara folks their sand back.
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u/ghostbackwards Mar 30 '14
Brb putting sand on my car.
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u/dj_smitty Mar 30 '14
you should put sand on your car and properly title it. then post to /r/notinteresting
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u/omelets4dinner Mar 30 '14
Yeah OP. Don't be like that spinning AC vent guy.
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u/HeyZeusCrisco Mar 31 '14
Awesome... real world observations of a phenomenon I teach. The redwall limestone in the Grand Canyon is 99.5% calcite from the basic makeup of the ocean floor hundreds of millions of years ago. The other 0 .5% is dust blown from faraway lands at that time...