Dust storm on Mars
Digital work
Mars has intense dust storms, which sometimes kick up enough dust to be seen by telescopes on Earth. Every year there are some moderately big dust storms that pop up on Mars and they cover continent-sized areas and last for weeks. Once every three Mars years (about 5.5 Earth years), on average, normal storms grow into planet-encircling dust storms, called "global dust storms".
It is unlikely that even these dust storms could strand an astronaut on Mars, however. Even the wind in the largest storms likely could not tip or rip apart major mechanical equipment. The winds in the strongest Martian storms top out at about 100 km (60 miles) per hour, less than half the speed of some hurricane-force winds on Earth. But the atmosphere of Mars is only about 1% as dense as Earth's atmosphere. That means to fly a kite on Mars, the wind would need to blow much faster than on Earth to get the kite in the air.
