Desert storm: Huge cloud of sand descends on Chinese village




Like a scene from a Hollywood disaster movie, a towering cloud of sand dwarfs the rows of uniform houses as it descends on a small village in central China.

Residents hid inside their homes with their windows and doors locked shut as the dust storm swept through the region advancing 70ft a minute.



On the move: A massive sand storm hits a village in Golmud in the Qinghai Province. The region is near the edge of the Gobi desert

Day turned to night as tons of dust temporarily blocked out the sun and reduced visibility to around 600ft. But suddenly the storm calmed and the mile-high cloud settled back to Earth again, leaving villagers with a major clean-up operation.

Golmud is home to 200,000 people with 140,000 living in the city centre. The new industrial city is built on a flat expanse close to the borders of the Gobi desert, which is the largest desert in Asia. Although not an ideal place to live, tens of thousands of people have relocated there to work at the salt lakes in the region.



But the prospect of a good job and lots of living space comes at a price. Every spring strong winds blow across the Gobi creating huge columns of dust and sand, which are then dumped nearby. The dust can cause frequent power blackouts, transport delays and respiratory illness.



These buildings didn't need their camouflage paint as the sand quickly hid the village from view in mid May

The massive sand storm swept along at 70ft a minute

The Gobi sand even travels as far as Beijing, with nearly a million tons of desert blown into the city each year. In March this year China's capital turned orange during a particularly ferocious dust storm.



More than a quarter of China - around one million square miles - is covered in sand with the Gobi covering northern parts of the country.

The bad news for the government is that the desert is growing despite their best efforts to contain it. The process of desertification has been worsened by over-grazing, deforestation, urban sprawl and an increasingly erratic climate.

The Chinese Academy of Sciences estimates that the number of sandstorms has jumped six-fold in the past 50 years to two dozen a year . Around 80 per cent of them occur between March and May.