Massive Dust Cloud Headed towards US!

A massive Saharan dust cloud is sweeping across the Atlantic! It has already reached the Caribbean, and should be spreading across Florida and parts of the southeast next week …

This phenomena is known as the Saharan Air Layer (SAL). Although it seems to be creeping in to the news more lately, this happens every year about this time, and usually persists through the summer to one degree or another. I suspect one reason you’re hearing more about it is that the newer generation of satellites lets you see it more clearly. As we all know, pics or it didn’t happen.

The primary impact of these things are hazy skies, pretty sunsets, and sometimes some degraded air quality depending on how much dust is at the lower levels. This one might have some minor impacts like that across Florida, but chances are most of you will be too busy fearing for your life from the visiting tourista drivers and their screaming kids to notice it.

There’s more on the way. Looking at Africa from the EUMETSAT hovering in geosynchronous orbit over the continent, we can see the dust streaming off ahead of a nascent tropical wave (the white blob inland) that will no doubt get the tropical fanboi community excited in a few days (but conditions are not favorable for it to do anything, unlike the invest off of Central America, see below).

The reason the SAL isn’t a year round thing has to do with the prevailing winds. Starting in late spring and through the summer, the winds over the Atlantic shift and the summer pattern becomes more east to west, as well as storms developing over the Sahara that kick up the dust from the surface. These prevailing winds are why hurricanes start out over the Atlantic, then curl up either into the Gulf of WTF or parallel to (and sometimes into) the US Atlantic coast. Here is a link to some more info about the SAL, from NOAA researchers.

Looking at things today (May 27th), this is a streamline map showing the winds at about 5000 feet … you can see the dust won’t wait until Albuquerque to make that right turn, so should end up across Florida and the southeastern US:

There is an invest off the coast of Central America that looks to spin up in the next day or so and will likely become the first tropical storm if not hurricane of the East Pacific season; will have more when it spins up since it seems likely to turn into Mexico…

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