Madrid (AFP) – Cars covered in orange dust, subway lanes with sand and the sky painted red: A great cloud of dust flew from the desert last night over Madrid and most of Spain.
People can be seen cleaning their cars or balconies or building gates with hoses in the heart of the Spanish capital, where This fine dust has transformed the landscape.
In the subway and parking lots the floors were dusty and brown spots appeared on the windows on the upper floors of the buildings.
This meteorological phenomenon, represented by strong hot winds laden with sand dust from the Sahara Desert, in Spain is called fog. It is very common, especially in the Atlantic archipelago of the Canary Islands, located in northwest Africa.
The current situation is “an unusual episode of fog with a very significant decrease in visibility over large areas of the peninsula,” Rubén del Campo, a spokesperson for the State Meteorological Agency (Aemet), detailed in a letter to reporters, affecting “ Cities are as far away as Granada (south), Madrid (central) and Leon (northwest).”
It will be continuous, because “the dust is expected to continue to arrive in large quantities during the remainder of Tuesday the 15th and during Wednesday the 16th” and on a large scale: “In the next few hours it will reach areas far from the Sahara.” Like the Netherlands and Germany, Del Campo said. .
Emmett explained, in a video on Twitter, that storms in the Sahara desert create gusts of wind on the Earth’s surface, which raise sand and dust particles.
The smallest particles are suspended in the air thanks to the difference in temperatures between the rising air and the cooling ground, while the heaviest falls, according to the foundation.
The wind then transports the particles to the Iberian Peninsula, where it is not excluded that there will be “mud rain” over Spain, if the fog converges with rainfall, Aemet warned.
Authorities said air quality was “extremely unfavorable” on Tuesday morning in Madrid, Segovia or Avila in the center of the country.
AP, AFP, Getty Images
Photo Editing: Fernanda Korpani