This is Weather Why, a series of articles exploring frequently asked questions about weather and explaining major local and national weather phenomena.
As thunderstorms moved through East Central Indiana late Wednesday, many saw a strange sight in the sky: dust. Instead of clear droplets of rainfall, many pictures of brown or murky-colored precipitation circulated on social media. So how did this dust get to Indiana, and what is the cause of such a strange phenomenon?
A large swirling low-pressure system is noted over the Central US on March 19th, 2025.
Oftentimes, it is related to wind gusts, especially associated with strong low-pressure systems. Weather systems that often form off the West Coast move south over the southern plains, forming powerful updrafts that generate storms, as well as high winds that often pick up dust and other particles off the ground. In many cases, these dust storms are limited to the plains of Texas and New Mexico, but depending on how strong the storm system is they can reach all the way across the country.
During the dust bowl of the 1930s, a storm system that was so strong that it carried a cloud of dust all the way to the East Coast, covering Washington D.C. in a brown hue in the spring of 1935. While impacts like that are extremely rare, dust is still possible, albeit very uncommon, in Indiana.
NASA's GOES satellite tracks dust moving across Indiana, highlighted by bright shades of pink.
While dust and rainfall don't often mix, in certain cases they combine to form a muddy, brown colored form of precipitation. The National Weather Service doesn't specifically have a name for this phenomenon, but it is commonly known as "dirty" or "dusty" rain. While impacts aren't significant, it can coat cars and surfaces in a thin layer of dirt and decrease visibility temporarily.
- Chief Weather Forecaster Noah Gordon
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