Karachi’s airspace was temporarily shut down as a dust storm hit on Monday night, reducing visibility from the usual seven to eight kilometres to half a kilometre.
“The pilots won’t want to take any unnecessary risk and most flights will be diverted if the visibility stays low or gets worse,” Civil Aviation Authority spokesperson Pervez George said. Any flights arriving during this time were to be diverted to Islamabad, Muscat, Bahrain and Lahore, and outgoing flights were delayed from taking off till visibility improved. “If we see that the situation is getting better and there is no risk then we can get flights taking off again,” said George.
“The storm could stay as long as 24 hours until tomorrow night,” said Sardar Safaraz, who is the director at the Meteorological department in Karachi. He explained that the storm was the result of high wind pressure from Balochistan and parts of Sindh, mostly coming in from the North West. The dry continental winds can upset people’s allergies but Sarfraz said that other than visibility issues there were no real hazards to a dust storm and they were not a rare occurrence in Sindh and Balochistan.
In fact, this weather condition did not even qualify as a sandstorm. It was rather a dust storm which is when finer particles are blown over long distances, especially affecting urban areas. Dust storms can become so severe as to render a city completely dark during the day, but Sarfraz said this one did not seem to venture outside the barriers of what is considered a normal dust storm.
Published in The Express Tribune, March 20th, 2012.
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