Authorities in the Canary Islands called for evacuations as a Saharan dust storm, in some places driven by hurricane-force winds, fueled wildfires that drove people toward the beaches to seek refuge. In Tasarte, fires broke out on Saturday night and claimed some homes, although firefighters appeared successful in setting up…
They’re starting to feel the dry, dusty Saharan winds known as harmattan in West Africa, where Nigerians and neighboring Togolese say the season is in the air. The annual weather pattern is common from December to March, with blowing desert dust across Ghana or Côte d’Ivoire to the south, or…
African dust has been getting a lot of media attention in Europe and the United States, as it contributes to everything from the yellow-tinged skies of Portugal during the recent Iberian Peninsula heat wave to the suppression of storm formation in this year’s slow Atlantic Ocean hurricane season. It is…
Laureen is the editor of Africa Times
The temperature in Abuja shortly after 1 a.m. Friday was 26 degrees, with Nigeria’s NiMet forecasting a high of 35° (95° Fahrenheit) by late afternoon – and that’s kept Nigerians talking about the unseasonably warm weather for this year’s Christmas season. This week, Zenith Bank ran a #ChristmasinNigeria campaign to…
It’s not every day that you find “Sahara” trending on Twitter accounts in Ireland and England, but Monday was no ordinary day as thousands of people marveled at skies turned orange and yellow, and a sun turned a striking red. People described “surreal skies” and a daylong eerie scene in…
As part of the global effort to combat climate change, the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) has issued its first annual Airborne Dust Bulletin to better understand how dust and sand storms impact humans – and how humans contribute too. “Every year, an estimated 2,000 million tons of dust is emitted into…
Laureen is the editor of Africa Times
Seasonal dust storms over West Africa have complicated holiday travel in Nigeria, where flight delays and cancellations left many passengers stranded Tuesday. Local media reports said the poor visibility caused by harmattan haze has left airline terminals packed with passengers, some of them sleeping with nowhere else to go. Flight cancellations…