Last vestiges of "winter"

This may seem more like an insult to all those people, particularly my family, living in places where there's still snow on the ground. I realize Oxford, OH and Chicago, IL are two of those places. Regardless, I've had a very different experience of the "seasons" here in Doha. They're less of seasons than rather slight changes in weather patterns. Spring, Summer, and Fall are all blazing hot. You might say if you're from Texas, "oh I know what hot is" but really you have no clue. In the summer, the construction workers aren't allowed to go to work when the temperature is 50 or above CELSIUS, which means that the temperature is always "just below" 50 but never over that (when in reality it quite often reaches that temperature).

Anyway, "winter" here is mostly cooler temperatures - around 50 degrees Fahrenheit as a low, sometimes dipping into the 40's but not for more than about a week or two in January - wind, sand, and a little bit of rain. We only had about 7 days of rain total and won't see that again until next January. The biggest hassle you have to deal with is the wind and sand storms. Sand storms are measured usually by visibility which can be reduced to about 1/4 of a mile or less at times. And because the windows and doors aren't sealed here because you don't have to worry about in the heat here, you end up getting deposits of sand on the floors near the door and on the counters near the windows. That's always lovely to clean up.

So this past week it's warmed up quite a bit and were thinking it was time for spring to start. It stopped being cold at night a while ago, but it hasn't necessarily been warm during the day. The last couple of days had topped 80F and then today slammed us with a nasty sand storm and cooler temperatures. It was so sandy outside that you could actually look directly at the sun and see the outline of it without burning your retina. That little dot in the picture above is the sun, not the moon if that gives you any idea. And all that crap on the window are sand deposits as well. No point in cleaning it off b/c it will be there again 2 days later. I'm thinking this is going to be one of the last bad storms of winter, but that only means heat and humidity from here on out... which I'm not necessarily looking forward to...