Dust storms are never fun. They are never good.

But this one was alarming. Weird. Check out the video from The National’s website.

It was that reddish-brown cast to it that made a person think of the “end of times”.

Your typical dust storm doesn’t blot out the sun. And it doesn’t generally have a color to it. If it has a color, it’s white. Like the sand at a beach.

This one had colored grit. It also seemed to drag on. Rather than blow through and blow out in 8-10 hours, this one greeted us in the morning and went on for the whole of the day.

An odd aspect to this was how the dirt hung in the air without much wind. The sand defied gravity.

We woke to this reddish-brown haze, it was there at noon, and it was there nearly till dusk.

It makes a person want to buy a mask. Several of the people in this photo gallery had prepared correctly. At least one is an idiot who is attempting to jog while breathing dirt.

Beyond the damage it might have done to our lungs, the storm also was responsible for lots of traffic accidents.

People who have been here for years — like me — are tempted to say this was the weirdest/most alarming dust storm we have seen in, say, five-plus years.