Posted on 07/23/2005 10:27:21 AM PDT by luknskill
The cloud heading this way is almost as big as the United States, Lushine said.
Thought this was out of the ordinary. The size anyhow.
http://www.thenewstribune.com/news/nationworld/story/5040423p-4596815c.html
I guess it will have to fight the dust cloud called the "DNC", which is already over the U.S., for room.
And not one satellite picture? Bah...
I'm confused. Would not the prevailing westerlies place the Sahara downwind from Florida?
I'm just waiting for the plague of locusts to hit 'em.
Free fertilizer and pretty sunsets. Beats a hurricane any day.
Is the next Democratic Convention in Florida?
This happens every year at the end of the dry season in Africa. The dust is blown across the Atlantic by the tradewinds and they usually blow over the Caribbean, where we get hazy conditions most of the time from late May through August. This is the first time I hear that the dust clouds make it all the way to the mainland.
My recommendations to Floridians:
1. These dust clouds carry allergens that most people on this side of the Atlantic are not used to. Be ready, specially asthma patients, in case the cloud is thick enough to cause trouble.
2. The dust clouds precede the rainy season in West Africa. The start of the rainy season is the beginning of the Cape Verde Hurricane season, when we start getting the train of tropical waves rolling out of Africa and into the warm Atlantic, where the most dangerous hurricanes originate.
Upwind. It's easterly trade winds at these latitudes.
I should have clarified. Easterly = east wind or wind from the east.
Florida is not in the prevailing westerlies - at least not South Florida. It's in the N.E. Trade Winds and is downwind from Sahara dust. We had them periodically when I lived in Miami.
Looks like Red Tide is in store for Florida acccording to this study.
Storm activity in the Sahara Desert region generates clouds of dust that originate from fine particles in the arid topsoil. Easterly trade winds carry the dust across the Atlantic Ocean and into the Gulf of Mexico. "Because iron is one of the most common elements in most soils, a certain percentage of the dust contains iron," said Lenes.
The study used satellite and ground based measurements to track large dust clouds leaving Africa on June 17, 1999. Lenes and his colleagues followed the clouds using data from the Advanced Very-High-Resolution Radiometer (AVHRR), an imager aboard the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's (NOAA's) Polar Orbiting Environmental Satellites (POES).
The Saharan dust reached the West Florida shelf around July 1st, increasing iron concentrations in the surface waters by 300 percent. As a result, Trichodesmium counts shot up 10 times what they had been prior to this event. Through a complex process involving a special enzyme called nitrogenase, the Trichodesmium used the iron to convert nitrogen in the water to a form more usable for other marine life. In October, after a 300 percent increase of dissolved organic nitrogen, a huge bloom of toxic red algae (Karenia brevis) had formed within the study area, an 8,100 square mile region between Tampa Bay and Fort Myers, Florida.
http://www.gsfc.nasa.gov/topstory/20010824redtides.html
Interesting.
Did you know that Cape Verde storms sometimes even blow bugs from Africa into and across the Atlantic?
Merchant ships have been known to be covered with locust in the middle of the ocean.
Unbelievable--While reading the thread, was wondering if the dust cloud might improve the red tide situation around here...until reading your disturbing post.
Fascinating info--thanks for the ping. Between the red tide, Sahara dust cloud, and tropical storms, boating is seriously hampered this summer.
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