Our First Sand Storm - Almost

On Friday, Michael came home with the news that a sandstorm was suppose to hit Beijing on Saturday. Apparently sandstorms are common in Beijing in the spring. Neither of us have been in a sandstorm before so we were (cautiously) excited about witnessing one. However Saturday started out quite warm and lovely with no storm in sight and we promptly forgot all about that silly 'storm'. The day was so warm in fact that when we went to the grocery store in the morning Cara wore her sandals.

Then at 1:30pm things started to get more exciting. We noticed a shadow advancing towards us from the west side of the city. (The views below are from our living room window which faces almost directly west.) In this first picture you can see the storm shadow at the edge of the embassy area.

We continued to watch the cloud slowly advance. By 2:04pm it had gotten only a little closer.

Then at 2:37pm it suddenly became very dark.

That's snow out there. But it was glorious earlier! How on earth could there be a snowstorm? Sand and snow are two completely different words and clearly this was the wrong one. We actually checked that the white stuff whirling outside our window was melting on our deck before we believed it was snowing.

And then it was suddenly all over and the day was lovely again, if a bit colder. By 4:30 the skies were completely cleared and a beautiful sunset had commenced its nightly show.