I was still over 25 miles from home when I first saw it.

It looked like a winter blizzard, low masses sweeping over the foothills and rims at the edge of the desert.

Only these rushing masses were a light dun, rather than white.

Dust storm.

Like those in the movies, this was a wall of brown, pushed at the front of a passing storm cell.

I dove off the highway at a convenient ramp and glided uphill to a stop at the gate, and started taking pictures. The foothills soon disappearing in dust.

I jumped when I heard an unexpected voice at my left shoulder.

"That's not a fire, is it?"

Another traveler on the highway, having seen me bail off, had pulled his truck up behind mine. In the roar of the wind, I never heard it or his steps.

No, that's dust.

"Yeah, I thought it was too wide for a fire." With that, he was back on the highway, headed into town.

Three wild horses came running into view, their butts to the wind and dust.

Soon the dust storm swallowed them up...

Along with the highway ahead.

A half-hour later I was rolling into town, our main street littered with fallen branches, and one shattered tree. I pass our street and see flashing red lights, and start to worry.

A half-block from our house, I find this:

Yet another one of the old mature trees in town is now gone.

I visit with the police chief as he sets out cones to block the street, who lets me know we were lucky. No downed powerlines in our little burg at all. This is the only big tree we lost. In town, though, they've got power out all over the place.

He remarks that not one of the old, dead trees that the town is paying money to have cut down managed to fall.

Well, no. They've got no leaves. No resistance to the wind.

I watch our neighbor take pictures of his smashed vehicle, presumably for the insurance company.

And then gather the fallen limbs off our yard, before going in to greet the wife.

And sending her out to see the latest Ent mortality.