Hot, dry winds blowing across the Sahara Desert have driven an enormous plume of dust more than 3,500 miles across the Atlantic Ocean.
As of June 6, 2022, the plume stretched from Africa to South America and even reached Puerto Rico. All told, it covered more than 2.2 million square miles of the tropical Atlantic Ocean. It's expected to blow into the Gulf of Mexico by the weekend — and cause dramatic sunsets in Florida and other locations.
The plume was so large and distinct that it was seen by the DSCOVR spacecraft stationed 984,628 miles from Earth:
NASA's DSCOVR spacecraft acquired this image of the Saharan dust plume stretching across the Atlantic Ocean on June 6, 2022. (Credit: NASA)
NASA
On average, the trade winds sweep an estimated 180 million metric tons of Saharan dust across the Atlantic Ocean to different parts of the Americas and the Caribbean Basin ...
