2010 China drought and dust storms the drought, including a three-day tour in mid-March in Yunnan, including Luliang County, which had seen no rainfall since August, to promote water conservation, and another visit in early April 2010 to several Miao and Buyei Autonomous Prefectures in Guizhou, some of the worst-hit places where farming has been made impossible. Most provinces in South China affected by the drought were hit by a series of floods beginning in mid-May that ended most of the drought but also destroyed large areas of farmland. Strong dust storms from the Gobi Desert in Mongolia hit Xinjiang Autonomous Region, Inner Mongolia, Shaanxi, Shanxi,
Gobi Desert is a rain shadow desert, formed by the Tibetan Plateau blocking precipitation from the Indian Ocean reaching the Gobi territory. The Gobi measures over from southwest to northeast and from north to south. The desert is widest in the west, along the line joining the Lake Bosten and the Lop Nor (87°–89° east). It occupies an arc of land in area as of 2007; it is the fifth-largest desert in the world and Asia's second largest. Much of the Gobi is not sandy but has exposed bare rock. In its broadest definition, the Gobi includes the long stretch of desert