Thursday, March 15, 2007
Dust Storm over the Canary Islands
Photo: NASA Aqua- MODIS SatelliteIf you'd heard the thunderstorm over the north of Tenerife last night and the force of the accompanying rain, you might not have been best pleased with the weather! But, the good news is that the sun has been trying to peek out today and the alert, which was declared on Tuesday and was expected to end today, was ended early yesterday.
Too much water falling all at once, did have the - by now customary - effect of causing retaining walls in Gran Canaria to break and generally putting the islands' infrastructures to the test. The north of Tenerife and Fuerteventura were also affected by the heavy rains, but there were no important incidents in Tenerife.
Well, unless you count the fact that I have been out and walked our track, as I always do after storms, removing the quite sizable rocks from the road surface that would be large enough to cause a flat tyre, if not more serious damage to passing vehicles.
Yesterday, after it had been raining heavily in the morning, the sun came out for a short while in the late afternoon, causing a quite spectacular effect that I had not seen before, where road surfaces and whole fields were quite literally steaming.
This weather has been quite a contrast to the dust storm, which on March 10th, saw thick plumes of dust blowing off the west coast of Africa and over the Canary Islands, as can be seen in this image for the NASA Earth Observatory.
And, guess what we're going to get now the rains have stopped?
Another sirocco! According to the atmospheric observatory at Izaņa, up on Mount Teide, Tenerife, the Canaries will commence a new episode similar to that of March 10th, owing to the movement in our direction, of yet another plume of dust.
This episode, say Canarias24horas, could be very intense (thick) in the eastern Canary Islands and, accompanied by other weather phenomenon, both dry and wet.
In other words, the winds that bring the dust cause the storms which bring the rain, which causes the wind that brings the dust ... Rinse and repeat.
Labels: Tenerife Weather
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