This morning the light on the beach reminded me of winter light in Michigan. I used to call it "a platinum grey dawn:" weak sunlight straining through high hazy snow clouds. Only here it's not snow clouds. It's dust from the Sahara Desert.
Every year in the sprig and summer Trade Winds blow sust from the Sahara eastward across the Atlantic and right at Puerto Rico. Right now the dust ball is huge. Estimates based on satellite images are this cloud is the size of the continental U.S.
Besides hazy skies the dust cloud does a couple of things. It holds heat in during the day, pushing us to near record high temperatures. Second, the cloud actually shades the ocean waters between here and the west coast of Africa. The shade keeps the water temperatures as much as 5 degrees cooler than they would be otherwise. The desert air carrying the dust is very dry. These two factors - the cooler water temperatures and the dry air - help inhibit the formation of tropical storms off the coast of Africa. Fewer, less intense tropical storms reduces the chances of a major damaging hurricane.
It never ceases to amaze me how interconnected every thing is. Until I move here, I never would have guess a dust storm in the Sahara Desert would have any impact on a hurricane in the Gulf of Mexico.
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