Hot, dry winds blowing across the Sahara Desert have driven an enormous plume of dust more than 3,500 miles (5,630 kilometers) across the Atlantic Ocean.
As of June 6, 2022, the plume stretched from Africa to South America and even reached Puerto Rico. All told, it covered more than 2.2 million square miles (5.7 million square kilometers) of the tropical Atlantic Ocean. It's expected to blow into the Gulf of Mexico by the weekend — and cause dramatic sunsets in Florida and other locations.
Visible from almost a million miles away
The plume was so large and distinct that it was seen by the DSCOVR spacecraft stationed 984,628 miles (1,584,605 km) from Earth: