Alright, good afternoon everybody.
I'm Kate show you 11 meteorologist
temp and ages and today's video's
purpose is to talk about dust.
Yeah, I know what you're thinking.
Dust what in the what are you talking
about with dust that's so boring?
Why does that even matter?
Well, this is a special kind of dust
'cause it's coming from all the way
across the Atlantic in Africa and it is
bringing some impacts here to some of
US allergy sufferers asthma sufferers,
but it's bringing nice sunrises, sunsets,
and it's also helping us keep the
Atlantic base in terms of hurricanes
tropical systems very, very quiet.
You can see it here,
indicated on our imagery that
there is some yellows across the
area and that is the Sahara.
Dust in the upper levels of the atmosphere.
So what exactly is it now?
We call it the Sahara air layer.
Sahara and dust layer,
whatever you want to call it.
It's the same thing.
It's a massive,
very dry,
dusty air that forms over the Sahara
desert during the late spring,
summer and early fall.
These two foot timeframes are
critical because that is right
around when we see the activity in
the Atlantic start to get fired up.
If we've got the dust in place,
that puts the kabosh on everything,
so we'd like to see that
climatologically So this time of the
year is favored to see that dust,
which is why tropical activity tends to
be a little bit low in the middle of July.
Kind of a lull before the ramp up
as we get in August in September.
Now they develop in Africa.
Now when tropical waves drive right
along the Southern Tier of the Sahara Desert.
And what those storms do is they
loft dust into the air,
and eventually it makes it into
the upper levels of the atmosphere.
And that's where winds push it
westwards and disperse it pretty
much across the northern hemisphere,
and even sometimes.
It makes its way into the southern
hemisphere.
Depending on the wind, shifts and direction.
Very very rare though that it
crosses the equator.
Now here's where it's going over
the next couple of days we've
got it over the area now,
and as we go out in time with the models,
we get a little bit of a break by mid week,
but it looks like another surge.
Another plume develops moving
over the Gulf of Mexico and bring
us once again lower air quality
in that hazy kind of sunshine.
Filtered sunshine across the area
so the Sahara air layer has pros
and cons with it. Some things that.
You would never think that dust
could actually do,
and it does fertilize the rainforest
in South America. How about that?
It's also a food source,
high in iron for fish in the Atlantic Ocean,
and this is the big one.
It deters the tropical development
in the Atlantic Basin.
Why does dry air stop tropical systems?
Will think about a tropical system.
It's very moist engine.
It needs warm ocean waters, moist mid,
lower upper levels of the atmosphere to
kind of get itself going like a functioning
engine when he got dry air thrown in the mix,
there is like an engine putting on out,
so that's not good.
Systems, and that's what we like to see.
Especially we can get it in here
around the peak of hurricane season.
And of course, vivid sunrises and sunsets.
You may have noticed that
this morning or this evening,
or for the next couple of days,
especially by the end of the week
when we get that another search.
But there are cons.
Poor air quality is present
across the region right now,
and that is not good for sensitive groups.
Allergy and asthma sufferers.
You get a little bit of a break
by mid week and then it ramps
back up by later this week.
Here's current air quality
observations moderate throughout
the entire area of Southeast Texas.
Really, all of East Texas.
A bunch of Louisiana and spreading
north as far north as Oklahoma City,
so it's impactful and it is
impacting those sensitive groups.
Allergy sufferers and asthma sufferers too.
Alright tropical satellite,
you can see that the dust is doing its job.
We are not tracking any areas of development
across the entire Atlantic Basin.
Climatologically speaking this
is not unusual.
We tend to see dust this time of the
year and then things kind of quiet
down and then we see an increase in
activity by late July and into August.
And of course,
September.
Right around the peak when if
we can get any dust at all,
that would be good to kind of call
that activity there all right,
that's all I have to say about dust.
There's not much more to go in about,
but if you have a question and answer
something yet a question about you can
reach out on social media on Instagram,
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the news coming up this evening at 5:30.