More Dust

OMG. Yep, you can say that again. Went I walked out of the house Thursday morning, this is what I saw. It had rained sand (or actually dust) all night) My puny little white dog wasn’t that white anymore (though still puny) after his morning walk.

When I walked my daughter to school. We wrote on all the car windows. We always assume that this dust suspended in the atmosphere comes from the Sahara; after all, that’s the closets desert we have, although the Syrian and Saudi deserts are close as well. But the Sahara sand is just a little more white. This dust is floating around in the upper layers of the atmosphere and could come from as far as South America (lower Orinoco), but it seems dust from Africa (Chad in particular) makes it all the way to the Amazon as well. (Thank you UTH). One-third of the global land area is covered by dust-producing surfaces.

These dust rains apparently are a common occurrence between April and May in the northern hemisphere. 

So where are we getting this dust from? No idea. It’s yellow, so probably not the Sahara. It’s not red, so that rules out the west coast of India. “ The Chinese, whose closeness of observation in agricultural matters is well known, assert that they are always followed by a fruitful season,” according to this article from 1852. 

Uhm, yes, we're still  working on the spelling .

Did you know that atmospheric dust can play a role in global cooling? Ice Ages are linked to it.  No, of course you don’t. You’re just upset you’ve got to go to the car wash. It still isn’t all gone though; I still have a hazy few from my house, there is no sunshine yet is HOT!