Yeah I was only in one sand storm, and it was as you describe. A giant wall of sand, a couple minutes of orange haze, and then raining buckets of mud.
The oil fires I saw in Kirkuk were huge. I don’t know what was going on, maybe entire refineries on fire. It wasn’t your average oil well for sure. If you hold your arms out at 45 degrees in front of you and point to the horizon, that is how big the plumes were at a distance of 5-10 miles. Reminded me of pictures of a huge F5 tornado. Luckily they didn’t waft over the base and instead seemed to stay together as a mass as it drifted miles above us.
You might think about adding some heat shimmer to the scenes if you can get away with it. I don’t know how else you can describe hellish heat visually. The weather was basically mild in Kirkuk(95F in June), but we stopped in Baghdad(Balad) on the way out and it was like a whole other world. The C-130 tail opened up, 120 degrees hit us in the face, the sky was orange, and there were oil fires burning on the horizon. It was like we had literally landed in Hell. 
Black flag at 10pm at night, ridiculous.
Thanks. 
Hopefully have some pretty new screens to share in a bit. Just working a few kinks out before I can show the latest assets.