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(NEXSTAR) – The days are hot. The storms are few and far between. The sunsets are beautiful. And high in the sky is a layer of dust that has traveled thousands of miles from Africa impacting the weather we’re seeing in the southern U.S. and beyond.
The Saharan Air Layer, often referred to as Saharan dust, is a 2.5-mile thick “layer cake” that starts about a mile up in the atmosphere, explained Jason Dunion, a University of Miami meteorologist who works closely with NOAA’s Hurricane Research Division.
“They roll off of Africa in the summertime every three to five days, and they’re huge. They’re about the size of the lower 48 states as they cross the Atlantic,” Dunion said.
The Saharan dust season usually peaks between mid-June and mid-August and it’s currently impacting weather around the U.S. in ways you may not have even realized. The layer of warm, dry, dusty air tends to break up the development of thunderstorms and hurricanes.
“It really helps to cap the atmosphere,” said Dunion. “It makes it very hard for thunderstorms and clouds to break that really warm layer.”
It’s one reason we may be seeing such a quiet start to the Atlantic hurricane season.
WFLA meteorologist Rebecca Barry shows a view of Saharan dust in August 2026. See more of her forecast in the video at the top of this story. (Nexstar/WFLA) “Look at this late-season plume. That is healthy,” meteorologist Rebecca Barry at Nexstar’s WFLA said while showing a map of the Saharan dust plume. “That looks like a late-May or June plume of Saharan dust. … It is pretty rare that this late in the season we have such a healthy plume of Saharan dust breaking off from the coastline of Africa and moving across the Atlantic.”
All that dust can prevent storm formation, including tropical depressions that would otherwise turn into tropical storms and hurricanes as they head toward the U.S.
Without as many summer storms, the temperature has been rising in the South. “We don’t really get those cool afternoon thunderstorms that we usually get when we’ve got these dust outbreaks overhead. So they tend to be in the hottest days of the year, and we’ve had heat indexes getting up to 110,” said Dunion.
Even beyond the South and Gulf states, the dust is having an impact. KXAN meteorologist Freddy Vela showed back-to-back waves of Saharan dust sweeping across Texas and as far west as Arizona in a forecast this week.
Another side-effect of the Saharan Air Layer: spectacular sunrises and sunsets. As the dust washes over Florida, it scatters the light and can create an orange glow at dawn and dusk.
“To me, it’s amazing,” said Dunion. “It’s traveled 3,000, 4,000 miles across the Atlantic bu you can still see it.”
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