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FRANCE: Scientists say they’ve determined the cause of the strange “milky” rain that fell on parts of the U.S. Pacific Northwest in February, putting it down to extreme weather and a dry lake bed 500 miles away.
A rare weather pattern near Oregon’s remote Summer Lake whipped up particles of sand and soil from the dry lake, which were carried north before a rainstorm deposited them in dirty, milky-white raindrops over parts of Oregon, Washington and Idaho, researchers at Washington State University in Spokane say.
A clue to the rain’s origin was a high sodium content detected in collected samples, explains WSU hydrochemist Kent Keller, who studied rainwater gathered near Kennewick, Washington.
“A lot of sodium was in that milky rain,” he says. “The chemistry is consistent with a saline source from a dry lake bed.”
The analysis ruled out other theories that had been put forward about the unusual phenomenon, such as ash from distant volcanic eruptions in Russia or Mexico, or wildfires or a Nevada dust storm that occurred around the same time.An examination of global and regional wind patterns ruled out the volcanoes.
