Shit Storm

It seems that is is a real thing.

"    We were in the Bridger Basin in Montana to excavate the Mothers’ Day Site, a mass assemblage of small-bodied diplodocid sauropod dinosaurs. The site was beyond a rather steep hill, so we camped roughly a half-mile away in a valley sheltered by a pair of low ridges. The campsite was lovely, except for one thing: the cow dung. The dry air desiccates the patties in a matter of hours, after which they were perfectly inoffensive.

    Our work was interrupted by a teammate shouting, “Oh shit, shit! We have to go NOW!” We looked up. There, halfway between us and the Beartooths Mountains, was a featureless black wall. It grew in height perceptibly as it drew closer, second by second. We started to cover up the site, but our teammate kept hurrying us on. In just a few minutes we were running back to camp. Blotting out the western sky from horizon to zenith was that black wall. Up close it wasn’t featureless. It was a dark, roiling mass of dust and debris hundreds of feet high, like a color negative of an avalanche.

    I don’t remember if I fell down, but I do remember that I ended up on the ground at some point, because I crawled underneath the locked department van. Most of the others went for the tents instead. Just as I was getting situated under the van, the rain started to fall. The dust had cleared but the wind hadn’t relented at all, and the rain was pelting the ground at a 30° angle in torrential sheets. Glenn Storss got to the van, unlocked it, and let me in, along with two or three other excavators who had opted for the vehicles over the tents. We made the right decision; the tents were having a bad time of it. None had blown away entirely; the tent pegs were hammered right in to rocks. But the less professional and more recreational tents, like my trio of tents, couldn’t cope with the wind. One after another, the tent poles snapped in each.

    After a bit, we started to hear hard *pings* as objects ricocheted off the van, and we realized we were getting hail, steadily increasing in abundance and size. The vehicles rocked ominously and the hail fell, and the wind blew and blew and blew and we were silent. Gradually, the storm abated.

    We went out to check on Mason Jane Milam, who had remained in her tent. As we approached, she emerged, smiling ruefully, streaked with green and brown. Her tent was filled with 15 to 20 centimeters of sludge of the same colors. Cow patties had been sent aloft when the storm first hit, blowing them into Mason’s door-less tent despite all her efforts. When the rain came next, it had rehydrated the excrement and turned her tent into a bathtub of bovine sewage. "

https://gizmodo.com/we-have-to-go-now-scientists-share-their-wildest-exper-1840613542