The wind picked up late last night and hasn’t stopped all day. Our three trees still seem rooted, although the one outside my office window looks like it needs to be re-staked – again.

Unlike most cities, where wind is good because it clears the air of all the smog, in Vegas the wind picks up the dust and hurls it into the air, making the sky go beige. I swept outside our front door this weekend, and now it’s coated with red dust again.

When I went out to check the mail, I noticed all the mountains had disappeared entirely. The sky was grey above my head, and pinky-beige down near the horizon, which had kind of moved closer, as if the earth’s curvature had increased.

I got a buzz out of pretending that I was walking around on the surface of a terraformed Martian landscape – which would probably look very similar.

(April 16 Update: Turns out this was a record wind storm, causing much disruption down in the valley.)