Chance image shows how sandstorm unfurls in Gobi Desert

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Kenji Kai, a meteorologist who specializes in yellow dust, reckons he was lucky when his vehicle was engulfed in a sandstorm near the Gobi Desert in Mongolia two years ago.

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He managed to record a towering wall of raging sand particles, and the rare video footage taken on a clear day has been released on the online journal of the Meteorological Society of Japan.

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“It was the first time for me to see a dust wall firsthand,” said Kai, professor emeritus of meteorology at Nagoya University. “The encounter was totally unexpected and fortuitous.”

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He hypothesizes that the area is a “dust hotspot” where geographical features frequently spawn sandstorms among other places in the Gobi Desert.

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The vehicle was running about 400 kilometers south-southwest of Ulan Bator before 5 p.m. local time on April 28, 2019, when the dust wall emerged a few kilometers ahead. Kai and other researchers whipped out a digital camera and other equipment to monitor the event.

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The footage suggested the sandstorm rose to a height of 600 meters with a maximum wind velocity of 65.52 kph inside it. Visibility was limited to a 10-meter radius or less.

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Kai has been surveying airborne fine particles in the Gobi Desert since 2013. Yellow dust particles originate from sandstorms in the desert and other parts of Asia.

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The area where the video was shot is no stranger to sandstorms. While Kai had found himself caught in sandstorms there in poor weather conditions, it was the first time to come across one on a fine day.

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Kai spent more than a year examining meteorological conditions at the time, along with satellite observation data, to report his findings in a thesis.

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The video and thesis are available at (https://www.jstage.jst.go.jp/article/sola/17/0/17_2021-023/_article/-char/en).

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