The UAE gets sandstorms. We get that. Like Southern California gets Santa Anas.

But this one is unusually severe.  As the photo, above, from our balcony showed, the sun has been nearly blotted out and we cannot clearly make out buildings more distant than across the street. And this was at high noon on February 20.

That’s a bad sandstorm.

This one is ugly on two levels.

–The sheer sandstorm-y-ness of it. That’s lots of dirt in the air, right here where we live. Enough to farm. Lots and lots of particulate matter, waiting for us to suck it into our lungs. This is air pollution on the sort of heroic scale of Beijing/Delhi.

–The heat that came with it. Sandstorms don’t have to be hot. This one was. The high today — and this is February 20, remember — was 99 degrees Fahrenheit. That is ridiculously hot even for the UAE. We don’t do 99 in February. Doesn’t happen. And it didn’t cool off quickly; it was 88 at 1 a.m.

In contrast, here is the view when it’s amazing. And below, what it usually looks like.

I spent the day worried about anyone doing serious exercise out in that gunk, and the people running around included the tennis players at the WTA event in Dubai, four sets of domestic soccer league players (in two matches) a whole bunch of domestic rugby players — and the horses up at Jebel Ali.

I believe all those events should have been postponed.

As an occasional asthmatic, I recoil from that kind of air. I never stepped outside today, aside from taking the photo. Had the day off, and stayed inside with the windows closed.

This is supposed to last well into tomorrow, according to this story in The National (and note the amount of dirt on the tennis court at the top of the link). It then will be followed, perhaps, by some rain — which would be welcome, to damp down all the sand/dirt coating the whole of the country.

The air here often is not good, almost entirely because of particulate matter, carried over the country by strong northwest winds. The issue of bad air is not talked about much, but that’s how it is.

However much wheezing I do while in Abu Dhabi, as soon as I leave the region my lungs thank me.