A dust storm spanning more than 1,000 miles made its way across northwest Africa Monday, documented from weather satellites above and residents on the ground.
These videos out of Greece and Libya show a dust storm crossing the Mediterranean Sea and turning the sky an ominous shade of red on April 1.
A large dust storm, or haboob, moved from Libya across the Mediterranean Sea to coat the island of Crete in Greece with dust, and create apocalyptic red skies on April 1. From weather satellites, the dust was indicated in a yellow color, but on the ground, webcams and eyewitness reports showed orange and even red skies.
Two days earlier, a massive dust storm, or haboob, swept across the Sahara Desert from western Algeria into Mauritania, Morocco, Western Sahara and the Canary Islands on March 30. The dust stretched for more than 1,000 miles.
A large haboob was seen sweeping across the Sahara in western Algeria on March 30. It was caught on satellite and on the ground in the town of Tindouf.
As meteorologists observed the dust storm from space via weather satellites, social media users captured the incoming dust storm on camera. One video shows a thick wall of dust and sand moving toward a resident of the town of Tindouf, near the Mauritanian, Western Saharan and Moroccan borders.
A dust storm sweeps across the Algeria-Mali border (European Union, Copernicus Sentinel-2 imagery)
While this storm didn’t make it too far off the coast, significant amounts of dust can drift westward from Africa across the Atlantic beginning in May. This can inhibit tropical storm formation, or the strengthening of an existing system, because the dusty air has about 50% less moisture than the typical tropical atmosphere.
Strong winds in the dust layer can also substantially increase the vertical wind shear in and around the storm environment, potentially disrupting any storm that forms.