“We started June with a thick layer of dust from the Sahara And higher than usual temperatures, “specialists from the American National Weather Service (NWS) in Puerto Rico informed. The inhabitants of North Africa will come to the residents of the Caribbean for the next few days.
Dust from Sahara has obscured the sky on the Caribbean islands
At the beginning of the week, the sky above a large part of the Caribbean islands clearly faded. It happened thanks to Saharan dust, which was attached by the wind from Africa. According to the AP agency, this is the largest event of this type since the beginning of the year.
The cloud of fine sand extends to Length about 3200 kilometers. The island very popular among tourists was within its reach: from Barbados in the east after Jamais in the west. Is over 1200 kilometers wide And she also covered her islands to Turks i Caicos In the north after Trynity And Tobago in the south.
As we read on the NWS profile Puerto Rico On the website X, “the sky will be hazy in this area for several days”, and the air will be of poor quality all the time.
Thanks to the strong winds from the Atlantic, the situation in the Caribbean part begins to improve. As far as on Tuesday in Puerto Rico Its concentration was still high, in the afternoon “we should see improvement” – assures Yidian Zayas meteorologist from the local NWS branch.
Puerto Rico feels the presence of Saharan dust since last weekend, and its greatest concentration has been recorded on Monday.
Dust from Africa on the way to America
According to experts, in the following days the wind will bear the particles of Saharan sand further north. In the second half of the week, the dust cloud should reach the United States.
The presence of dust in a few days may be felt in the states Florida, Alabama i Mississippi – warns Alex Dasilva, an expert from the weather service AccuWeather.
The specialist cited by AP added, however, that usually after passing through the Caribbean, the cloud disperses more and the concentration of dust in several American states should be clearly lower.
Dust from Sahara It usually reaches the western part of the Atlantic from April to October. He usually achieves the highest concentration in this part of the world in June and July – explains Dasilva.
A record thick cloud came over the Caribbean in 2020. At that time, there was so much dust that local synoptics called it “dust cloud -seat” – we read in AP. In Puerto Rico, the concentration of dust 24 times exceeded the air quality limit of the American Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).
Source: AP, NWS, elnuevodia.com, gmao.gsfc.nasa.gov