AccuWeather's Melissa Constanzer explains how dust from the Sahara Desert in Africa impacts tropical development during the Atlantic hurricane season, disrupting the process with dry and dusty air.
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00:00satellite imagery over the past few days looking across the Atlantic shows you day in and day out
00:09a brownish cloud moving westward across the Atlantic that is Saharan dust working its way
00:18through and we do know that Saharan dust plays a large role in tropical development especially
00:23this time of year so when we talk about Atlantic hurricane season and when we look for tropical
00:28development we know we need warm water we need limited wind shear and we need sufficient moisture
00:33basically if there's a lot of dry dusty air that's going to stop that convection from forming those
00:39thunderstorms from forming to help organize a tropical system so now as we talk about Saharan
00:44dust let's take a little bit of a geography trip shall we we'll go across the world over to Africa
00:50and as we go across the ocean you can see in Africa northern Africa the Saharan desert is the largest
00:56hot desert in the world there is a desert through the Arctic and Antarctic it's also north of the
01:01equator which we know this time of year the sun's rays are really beating down near and just north of
01:06the equator that's going to help drive showers and thunderstorms so we have this moist air mass here
01:11to the south and then it starts to develop more dust just north of that area well that dust comes out
01:17in giant streams and plumes this time of year captured by the high pressure system for the early season
01:24of the Atlantic hurricane season once we get into July and August the middle of the season that high
01:29starts to drift a little farther west so sometimes not everything gets pushed all the way east
01:35but what we do know is those thunderstorms they start to develop more across the Saharan giant
01:39clusters these are the tropical waves will follow across the Atlantic for potential development
01:45but ahead of it we can also get large dust plumes which would inhibit any sort of showers and
01:50thunderstorms ahead of that tropical wave