I noted a similar thing in my post here.
What seems to have have happened is that the sandstorm, like a flock of birds, has decided to migrate south. The south side of the sandstorm now touches down in the starter desert (which must be fun to new players logging in for the first time). However, the north side of the sandstorm seems to have moved south as well. They didn’t remove the visual effects for it though, which is why you see the flying dirt and dust clouds at first.
Funcom has yet to mention if this is intentional or not.