MUYNAK, Uzbekistan — The fierce windstorm that walloped this small defunct port in late spring stunned even a local ecologist long resigned to the devastation wrought by the disappearance of the once ample Aral Sea.

A thick, stinging haze greeted the ecologist, Gileyboi Zhyemuratov, as he stepped outside that day in May. “When you opened the door, everything was white like snow,” said Mr. Zhyemuratov, 57, a descendant of generations of fishermen in a place where there are no longer any fish.