The Cyclonic dust storm in North India killed at least 125 people across India. The wind speed during the storm may have gone up to 100 to 130 kilometers per hour. The violent stormy wind destroyed many villages and it has brought down electricity, uprooted the trees, devastated the houses and killed many animals. The storm affected Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh, Punjab and Haryana and southern state Andra Pradesh.
"I've been in office for 20 years, and this is the worst I've seen," Hemant Gera, secretary for disaster management and relief in Rajasthan, told BBC News about the storm.
The relief commissioner told people to be alert.
A dust storm is a meteorological phenomenon common in arid and semi-arid regions. Dust storms arise when a gust front or other strong wind blows loose sand and dirt from a dry surface. Fine particles are transported by saltation and suspension, a process that moves soil from one place and deposits it in another. A sandstorm can transport and carry large volumes of sand unexpectedly.
Sandstorms also called dust storms are caused by strong winds blowing over loose soil or sand, and picking up so much of that material that visibility is greatly reduced. The widespread abundance of loose sand in deserts makes them the most common locations for sandstorms to form.
Dust storms cause soil loss from the dry lands, and worse, they preferentially remove organic matter and the nutrient-rich lightest particles, thereby reducing agricultural productivity. Also, the abrasive effect of the storm damages young crop plants.
The Dust Bowl, also known as the Dirty Thirties, was a period of severe dust storms that greatly damaged the ecology and agriculture of the American and Canadian prairies during the 1930s; severe drought and a failure to apply dryland farming methods to prevent wind erosion (the Aeolian processes) caused the phenomenon.