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Today in Spain we are receiving muddy rain, which happens when there is a wind from the south that picks up sand from the Sahara. It reminded me of a science fiction novel I read about 10 years ago, but which was much older, probably dating from the 1970s. It dealt with a situation where the wind started to blow continuously, and to increase its velocity every day. I do not believe that a specific physical cause was given. Because of the increasing wind speed, the landscape began to be eroded as the wind carried away the soil, and bodies of water started to dry up.

I do remember that one of the main characters was a scientist, and he used a rain gauge to measure the amount of soil which fell from the sky each day. He must have been based in London as there was a description of the population huddling in the Tube when it became unsafe to stay on the surface. I am not sure exactly how it ended, but I believe that an insane millionaire (or maybe billionaire) constructed a steel pyramid to live in to defy the wind. The pyramid was indeed impregnable, but it toppled over as the wind removed the ground it stood on.

I thought it might be the sort of global catastrophe that John Wyndham or John Christopher might have written, but I do not see anything in their works which matches.

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  • You can see that same wind-borne Saharan mud accumulate as wet clay in the crooks of branches of trees from cloud forests on Caribbean mountain tops!
    – Lexible
    Commented Mar 15, 2022 at 16:21
  • The cause of the wind is given vaguely as a stream of high-energy particles hitting one hemisphere of the Earth over a period of days. As Ballard would no doubt have been aware, the likelihood of this being sustained while the Earth moved along its orbit would be infinitesimal unless it were done purposely by some outside agency, but the characters are too wrapped up in their own problems to give this any thought. Given that the wind immediately begins to flag after the pyramid -- which is evidently the last standing human-built structure on the planet -- falls, ...
    – Invisible Trihedron
    Commented Mar 16, 2022 at 12:15
  • ... it's clear that humanity has been given a sharp lesson for our hubris. Russia is stripped of its soil; New York is under hundreds of feet of water piled up as the wind blows westward across the ocean. The novel is not one of Ballard's best, but for some reason I've found it memorable. It would have made a good movie.
    – Invisible Trihedron
    Commented Mar 16, 2022 at 12:20

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That sounds a lot like J. G. Ballard's The Wind from Nowhere. The date's about right: 1961. The pyramid shows up. The wind. See Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Wind_from_Nowhere

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    The wiki entry does sound convincing, but I'd like to find some quotes before I positively accept the identification
    – Clara Díaz Sanchez
    Commented Mar 15, 2022 at 13:53
  • I agree that the description sounds like J.G. Ballard's The Wind from Nowhere which I read long ago in the previous millennium.
    – M. A. Golding
    Commented Mar 15, 2022 at 19:18
  • Yes, this is the one. The scientist measuring the dust-fall was Andrew Symington, and the millioaire who built the pyramid was called Hardoon (the pyramid was named "Hardoon's Tower")
    – Clara Díaz Sanchez
    Commented Mar 16, 2022 at 8:57

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