Sometimes, one moment on an expedition can be so impactful it changes the way we think about the world around us, even for a veteran explorer familiar with the area. This is what happened to Tom Paradise and his team when the fierce Khamsin desert winds enveloped his expedition party in Wadi Rum last year. Join Tom and The Explorers Club for a personal account and investigation into this powerful phenomenon.
Having worked in southern Jordan since 1990, Tom Paradise has slept in Bedouin tents, studied the desert, climbed Mount Nebo and Jebel Haroun – the legendary burial sites of Moses and his brother Aaron, and has documented hundreds of Nabatean tombs and monuments. However, the rare, and often ferocious Khamsin winds have constantly eluded Paradise and his teams. However, in May 2024, when on an Explorers Club Flag Expedition in Wadi Rum near the Saudi border, he and his group were fortuitously loaded with field equipment when the extraordinary winds hit. Lasting only 83 minutes, the southerly winds stirred up the desert floor creating a solid wall of dust and sand. The gales gusted up to 100 kph (65mph) while the team recorded the dramatic event. Not only was it an outrageous experience, these ‘winds of legend‘ profoundly challenged our understanding about desert landforms and environmental dynamics. Was such a rare and savage episode able to change the desert cliffs and dune fields blowing only a few hours each year, or was it our current conventional theories of everyday processes (uniformitarianism) that truly change the landscape around us? For a team of veteran field geoscientists and grad students, our way of looking at desert landforms was changed forever…
This in-person event at the Explorers Club Headquarters will include an audience Q&A.
Streaming live here on explorers.org, our YouTube Channel, and our Facebook Live — Monday, March 17th at 7:00 pm ET.
RESERVATIONS
This will be an in-person lecture at Explorers Club Headquarters.
In-person tickets are $20 for Members, and $35 for the General Public.
Check-in will begin at 6:00 pm, with a beer and wine reception from 6:00 – 7:00 pm
Tom Paradise FN'17
Tom Paradise is a Distinguished (University) Geosciences Professor and former director of the King Fahd Center for Middle East Studies at the University of Arkansas. He comes from a diverse background in the geosciences, architectural and stone conservation, cultural heritage management, cartography/GIS, and Middle East and North Africa geography, with specializations in Jordan, Italy, Morocco, Tunisia, and Egypt.
Having researched the unique, decaying sandstone architecture and environment of Petra and Wadi Rum, Jordan since the 1990, he has published more than 60 articles, chapters, and books on Petra and continues to advise foreign agencies on cultural heritage management, stone architectural deterioration, and Middle Eastern and North African architecture. In addition, Paradise has published more than 2,500 maps and 3 atlases on regions and topics across the Middle East, North Africa, and the globe for various agencies, authors, publishers, and corporations.
Professor Paradise was awarded a senior scholar Fulbright to Jordan from 1998-2000 and was the Joukowsky Distinguished Lecturer for the American Institute of Archaeology (AIA) for 2021-2022 for his work and research on Petra and Wadi Rum, Jordan and the historic preservation of ancient and classical sites. He has also been instrumental in the production of more than fifteen TV specials on Petra including PBS Nova award-winning ‘Lost City of Stone’, The Smithsonian Channel’s ‘Riddle of Petra’, and Discovery Channel’s ‘Mystery of Petra’.
Tom Paradise has taught abroad at Universities in Amman, Rome, Venice, Cairo, and Tunis, as well as in the US in Hawai’i, Arizona, Georgia, and California. He currently lives in Fayetteville, Arkansas, teaching in the J. William Fulbright College and the King Fahd Center at the University of Arkansas.
