Deserts
About Deserts | World Deserts | American Deserts

About Deserts
Aaah! A Breeze!

Desert winds range from cool evening breezes to major dust and sand storms...Some names: harmattan, santana, khamsin, sirocco. Dust devils, or whirlwinds, often spin over the landscape, but they are harmless and fun compared to occasional storms so thick with sand and dust that you can scarcely breathe or see, and that strip paint off cars and invade the tightest windows and doors to deposit layers of grit everywhere.

• Strong dry winds blow at least part of the year, drawing moisture from plants, soil and skin
• On a hot, gusty day, people perspire up to one quart of water an hour
• In severe wind like a Saharan sandstorm, it is literally possible to dry up like a mummy
• Imagine yourself in front of a giant hair dryer on its hottest, fastest setting, and you've got the picture.

Desert animals can run, fly, burrow, huddle, and hide when the winds come up, but plants are stationary and must have built in defenses. Some are shaped to withstand wind: the creosote bush looks like a loosely held "bouquet" of thin, tiny-leaved branches, so wind just passes right through it; varieties of cactus break the force of the wind with thick, interlocking spines.
The thin, flexible branches of the creosote bush allow the wind to pass right through.

Other plants are able to change in response to wind:

• Common buckwheat will elongate its central stem as much as 15 feet to keep its head above wind blown sand that would otherwise bury it
• Still others use wind to their advantage to disperse seeds
• Every spring, cottonwood trees let loose an immense amount of seed-containing fluff; it looks like thin strands of cotton as it wafts about
  The Living Desert
• Tumbleweeds,quintessentially Western, but actually imports called Russian thistle roll over the open desert, depositing seeds as they go

Winds intensify aridity and help shade the desert by building, moving, demolishing, exposing and eroding the landscape. The great moving dunes of the Sahara and the impressive Algodones Dunes in California are wind creations, and so are the random drifts rippling across the desert floor. Sandblasting creates bizarre rock sculptures. Wind also steals the light weight sand from rocky terrain, leaving a mosaic of stones on the surface called desert pavement.