Sand Storms
The whole of this region is swept bare of sand by the terrific sand storms (burãns) of the spring months and the particles of wind-blown sand act like a sand blast. Abrasion of the rocks forms the Yardangs. The desert itself is abraded, filed, eroded and carried bodily away into the network of lakes in which the Tarim River wanders. The sand also blows across the lower, constantly shifting waterways of the Tarim River and deposits itself onto gigantic dunes that choke the eastern end of the Taklamakan Desert. The extreme weather and ever moving sand dunes have resulted in the deaths of hundreds of people.
Read more about this topic: Lop Desert
Famous quotes containing the words sand and/or storms:
“This sand seemed to us the connecting link between land and water. It was a kind of water on which you could walk, and you could see the ripple-marks on its surface, produced by the winds, precisely like those at the bottom of a brook or lake. We had read that Mussulmans are permitted by the Koran to perform their ablutions in sand when they cannot get water, a necessary indulgence in Arabia, and we now understand the propriety of this provision.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“I hold it that a little rebellion, now and then, is a good thing, and as necessary in the political world as storms in the physical.... It is a medicine necessary for the sound health of government.”
—Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826)