From a May 4 post on Gizmodo.com:
This year’s drought-exacerbated dusty season is “truly exceptional—one for the record books,” said Thomas Gill, an environmental scientist at the University of Texas at El Paso, in a NASA Earth Observatory release. Gill has tracked dust activity across the planet (and the Borderplex specifically) for decades.
. . .
Why are there so many storms this year? You can blame it on a climatic cocktail of drought and record-breaking wind. March was the windiest month the region has seen in over 50 years, Gill said, and the area is in “the worst drought we’ve seen in at least a decade.” My allergy clogged sinus is thanking its lucky stars it isn’t in the Southwest right now.
So it’s not just your imagination, and your memory is not failing you. It really is windier, and dustier, this year.
That picture above, though, is from 2018.
My water science friends at the Permanent Forum of Binational Waters are calling it “desertification” and based on tree rings and lake beds the worst drought in 800 years.
Tell me that climate change is not real. I would like to just remind rich folks that all the money in the world is not breathable, edible, or drinkable. They, too, will find that reality can bite them on the ass.