As the east coast of the United States braced for the onset of megastorm Hurricane Sandy, we had our own impressive — if ultimately harmless — storm roll onto these shores.

In no way was this weather front the crisis Sandy posed to New York and New Jersey, but it was interesting in that it presented the leading edge of a sandstorm in a very graphic way — as seen above in a photo sent to The National by Mimmo Catalano, and taken at the inland Liwa Oasis, on the edge of the Empty Quarter.

And for me, at least, it was impressive in this way:

Not in three years of living in the UAE had I ever seen the leading edge of a sandstorm actually look the way it often is portrayed in media.

In the most recent Mission Impossible movie (Ghost Protocol), an enormous sandstorm strikes Dubai as Tom Cruise is hanging around the Burj Khalifa, the world’s tallest building.

And I wrote that of the several unrealistic depictions of Dubai in that movie, “that sandstorm” was at the top of the list of my complaints. After all, I hadn’t seen one like that and I’d been in the country two years and been through a dozen sandstorms.

Now, I’ve seen one like the one in the movie — and you’ve seen one, too. (Aside from real damage being done.)

The sandstorm in the MI movie packs a punch that sandstorms here do not. They can be very brisk, powerful, and they can blow over the odd tree. Mostly, though, they keep mountains of dust/dirt in the air, and make breathing difficult and coat the country with grit.

In the case of this one, which looked so impressive, it blew out in a very short time … like, 30 minutes, at most — and caused no damage, and when it was over the air was soon unusually crisp and clean, and rain fell in the north of the UAE.

Actually, the UAE has one major advantage, geography-related: It has very few natural disasters. No earthquakes, no hurricanes, no tornadoes, no significant flooding, no mud slides, not even any immediately dire sandstorms. It’s just hot.

And a week ago I would have said that sandstorms here in Abu Dhabi were, well, overblown as visual phenomena. But then we got the one that rolled in above. Which also was caught on video by a coworker from his apartment a few blocks from the offices of The National. (Things get good around the 40-second mark.)