Why is my car so dirty? Blizzard came with unusual coat of dust in Nebraska

If your vehicle was parked outside during Wednesday’s fierce blizzard that blew through the Midwest, you might be needing a car wash. Along with the heavy rain and snow and winds reaching 75 miles per hour, the blizzard carried a coating of dust from the south. Brian Barjenbruch, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Valley, said it was due to a dust storm from Texas and New Mexico.

He said the wind sucked up the dust into a low-pressure system to the north and east and wrapped around it. “A lot of our snow developed in a really dusty air mass way above the ground, and even a lot of the sleet and people who received hail early in the day, so all of that then fell down,” Barjenbruch said. “That’s why, especially the bottom layer of this snow and sleet was really dirty, dusty looking.



” In addition to the dust covering Nebraska, other news organizations reported dirty rain in Illinois, Wisconsin and Michigan. According to The Associated Press, New Mexico saw strong winds and a dust storm that swept through on Tuesday, causing an emergency alert for zero-visibility conditions. A red flag warning indicated a high risk that fires could start or spread because of the dry winds that extended into parts of Texas, Oklahoma and other southern states until Thursday.

Barjenbruch said that while the dusty snow isn’t common, it’s happened before. “It’s a little strange, but especially in a really strong storm system like that in the spring, it will kick up a lot of dust down there,” Barjenbruch said. As temperatures warmed up on Thursday, the lines continued to grow longer at car washes, with residents eager to clean off their cars.

For Taylor Norman, the storm came at a perfect time because it was her first day working at JetSplash Car Wash at 40th and South streets. As part of her training on Thursday, Norman had to clean her own car, which had been parked outside during the storm. “I woke up this morning with a thick sheet of ice on my car and snow, and it took me 20 minutes to get it all,” Norman said Thursday afternoon.

In the couple of hours she had been working, Norman said the car wash already had over 100 people come through..