Strange Days in Brisbane

There was a day last month when Brisbane resembled a scene from Close Encounters of the Third Kind. Around mid-morning, winds began to pick up, eventually gusting to 70 km/hr. The air started getting drier, and everything began to get hazy as if a thick fog was rolling in. The skies outside turned grey, then orange, then completely indistinguishable. Remember that scene from the movie where the house starts to rattle and an eerie light filters through the windows and under the floorboards, right before the kid starts to open the door? That's a bit how I felt when I realized something strange was taking place outside. I opened the front door to my house and this is what I saw:
A dust storm had descended upon the city, the most severe one in recent history, covering everything in a fine orange layer. I walked around, scanning the horizon and realized that the sun had been completely blotted from the sky. People were walking around with facemasks or covering their mouths with handkerchiefs. It felt like a hazy apocalypse.

Then, as quickly as it had arrived, the dust storm was gone, leaving a bewildered city in its wake.

This is a picture I snapped up of the field the next day. Everything had returned to normal (except that Brisbane is usually perfectly sunny without a cloud in the sky).