San Juan, Puerto Rico – A huge cloud of Sahara desert dust covered most of the Caribbean on Monday at the largest event of this type this year while heading towards the United States.
The cloud extended about 2,000 miles (3,200 kilometers) from Jamaica to Barbados beyond Barbados in the East Caribbean, and about 750 miles (1,200 kilometers) of the Turkish and Caicos Islands in the North Caribbean in southern Trinidad and Tobago.
“It’s very impressive,” said Alex Dasilva, hurricanes expert with Accuweather.
The nebulous skies unleashed sneezing, coughing and crying eyes in the Caribbean, with local forecasters warning that those with allergies, asthma and other conditions must remain indoors or use facial masks if they are outdoors.
The concentration of dust was high, with an optical depth of .55 aerosol, the greatest amount so far this year, said Yidiana Zayas, an prosticator of the National Meteorological Service in San Juan, Puerto Rico.
Aerosol optical depth measures how much direct sunlight it is prevented from reaching the soil by particles, according to the US national and national atmospheric administration. UU.
The Penacho arrives in Florida, Louisiana, Alabama and Mississippi at the end of this week and until the weekend, Dasilva said.
However, feathers generally lose most of their concentration in the Eastern Caribbean, he said.
“These islands tend to see more impact, plus a concentration in which you can actually block the sun a little sometimes,” he said.
The dry and dusty air known as the Saharan air layer is formed on the Sahara desert in Africa and moves west through the Atlantic Ocean from April to approximately October, according to NOAA. It also prevents tropical waves during the Atlantic hurricane season, which will take place from June 1 to November 30.
June and July generally have the highest dust concentration on average, with feathers traveling between 5,000 feet at 20,000 feet on the ground, said Dasilva.
In June 2020, a cloud of Sahara dust stifled the Caribbean. The size and concentration of the plume had not been seen in half a century, which led the forecasts to nickname the “Godzilla dust cloud.”
