San Juan, Porerto Rico – A huge cloud of dust from the Sahara desert covered most of the Caribbean on Monday in the biggest event this year when he heads to the United States.
The cloud has extended 2,000 miles from Jamaica for good after the Barbados in the oriental Caribbean and 750 miles from the Turkish and caïcos islands in the North of the Caribbean below south to Trinidad and Tobago.
“It’s very impressive,” said Alex Dasilva, an expert in a hurricane with Accuweather.
The misty sky has triggered sneezing, coughing and aqueous eyes through the Caribbean, with local forecasters warning that those who suffer from allergies, asthma and other conditions should remain inside or wear facial masks if the outside.
The concentration of dust was high, at 0.55 aerosol optical depth, the highest quantity so far this year, said Yidiana Zayas, a forecaster of the National Weather Service in San Juan, Puerto Rico.
The optical depth of aerosols measures the amount of direct sun prevented from reaching the soil by particles, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric American administration.
Panache should strike Florida, Louisiana, Alabama and Mississippi at the end of the week and during the weekend, Dasilva said.
However, the plumes generally lose most of their concentration in the eastern Caribbean, he noted.
“These islands tend to see more an impact, plus a concentration where it can sometimes block the sun a little,” he said.
The dry and dusty air known as the Saharan air layer forms on the Sahara desert in Africa and moves to the west through the Atlantic Ocean from April until October, according to the NOAA. It also prevents tropical waves from training during the Atlantic Hurricane season, which takes place from June 1 to November 30.
June and July generally have the highest concentration of dust on average, the plumes moving from 5,000 feet to 20,000 feet above the ground, said Dasilva.
In June 2020, a record cloud of dust from Sahara stifled the Caribbean. The size and concentration of the plume had not been seen in half a century, encouraging forecastists to nickname it “Godzilla Dust Cloud”.
