Forum Response on ThothWeb

I’m not really sure what it is either. I’ve never seen anything like it. Sand storms are not small events in Cairo, so that’s not it and I would imagine a dust devil of that size would have had to have formed out in open territory and not down in the City. I used the Google Earth measuring tool to get a (very) rough estimate of the length of that dark horizontal area and it’s almost a tenth of a mile long.
It could be the remains of Ramadan cooking fires from the various parts of the City. The North and North East sides of that Pyramid face a massive urban sprawl that make up the various crowded districts of Cairo.
. I checked theWeather and wind patterns for October 24, 2005 in that area and found that, apart from 6:00 to 7:00 AM, when the wind died down, there was a steady light breeze out of the North-North East for most of the day. In fact, between 9:00 and 10:00 AM, the wind briefly shifted back to the North and picked up speed from a mellow and steady 2.3 mph to 13.8 mph by 10:00 AM.
Now, I’m no expert, but I would think it more likely that, unless that thing is actually emanating from the structure itself, it’s probably something carried out from the City. It having been Ramadan, at the time, the first thing that came to my mind was that Cairo receives a huge influx of rural folk for the Holiday seaspm. Whether it’s to visit and celebrate with family members or to worship at a specific holy shrine or masgid, the rural Fellaheen flood into certain parts of Cairo. Mainly, in to the older districts that surround the Citadel, which are to the North and North East of the Giza plateau.
I remember how sunsets in Cairo always look more thrilling and picturesque than sunrises. It was the mixture of exhaust from the prodigious traffic, and the various, um, native cooking methods, not to mention thousands of coffee houses all over the place, where everyone smokes a water pipe. This builds up during the day and causes those fantastic sunsets. During Ramadan, however, the opposite was true. Sunrise looked like a Renaissance painting. Someone once told me that it was because people, sort of, reverse their days during Ramadan because of the Fast, and that, because they take the supper meal before sunrise and the breakfast meal at sunset, ll that built up haze doesn’t have time to dissipate the way it does the rest of the year.
So, that’s what made me think smog; In fact, one can see along the base of the pyramids that there is a light layer of rolling smog already but I’ll tell y’all, it’s that horizontal line that that cloud is casting that bugs me. I mean whatever it is it covers a fairly large area. and, with the sun being on the opposite side at the time, I not sure what phenomenon could cause something so exact and precise. I mean, I would imagine that either a dust devil or a smog cloud couldn’t cast such an exact silhouette, so…?
Thoughts?