Dust is blowing out over the Pacific Ocean from California and the Baja Peninsula in This image from February 9, 2002. North of center in the image is the Salton Sea, formed when irrigation controls along the Colorado River burst in the early 1900s, and nearly the entire volume of the Colorado poured into the desert for almost two years. Northwest of the Salton Sea, Los Angeles makes a grayish area amid the greenish brown mountainous terrain along the coast.