by A huge plume of Sahara Desert dust that drifted across the Atlantic Ocean has reached the southeastern United States.
These events have happened before, according to Marshall Shepherd, director of the University of Georgia's Atmospheric Sciences Program. Hundreds of millions of tons of dust from the giant North African desert collect in plumes and move west every year, and those plumes have long helped build up Caribbean beaches and fertilize soil in the Amazon, Shepherd wrote for Forbes. The dust also routinely poses respiratory issues for people in impacted areas.
But this plume, which the National Weather Service (NWS) expects to blanket the U.S. Southeast and Puerto Rico through the weekend, is the biggest in at least the past 50 years.
The plume is 3,500 miles (5,600 kilometers) long, according to Reuters, and will impact regions as far flung as Puerto Rico, Texas and North Carolina over the weekend, according to the NWS.
The Weather Channel reported that some of the dust might reach the lower Midwest and as far north as the Chesapeake Bay before receding back to the Atlantic on Monday (June 29).
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These events have happened before, according to Marshall Shepherd, director of the University of Georgia's Atmospheric Sciences Program. Hundreds of millions of tons of dust from the giant North African desert collect in plumes and move west every year, and those plumes have long helped build up Caribbean beaches and fertilize soil in the Amazon, Shepherd wrote for Forbes. The dust also routinely poses respiratory issues for people in impacted areas.
But this plume, which the National Weather Service (NWS) expects to blanket the U.S. Southeast and Puerto Rico through the weekend, is the biggest in at least the past 50 years.
The plume is 3,500 miles (5,600 kilometers) long, according to Reuters, and will impact regions as far flung as Puerto Rico, Texas and North Carolina over the weekend, according to the NWS.
The Weather Channel reported that some of the dust might reach the lower Midwest and as far north as the Chesapeake Bay before receding back to the Atlantic on Monday (June 29).
Continued...
Source
