Chinese Dust Storm Hits N. America

Discovery News

A little bit of China is now coursing over North America, creating smoke-like hazes over vast areas. A gigantic dust storm in the Gobi Desert began in early April and has caused yellow-brown dust to lift off and take flight eastward over the Pacific Ocean. Last week the first wave of dust struck the Pacific coast of North America, reducing visibility to just a few miles on what would otherwise have been sunny, clear spring days. "The Asian dust over different parts of North America was quite impressive over the past few days," said dust watcher Rudy Husar of Washington University in St. Louis. So thick was the dust over Easter weekend that visitors to western U.S. national parks have reportedly been asking rangers where the "fire" is.

Normally only smoke from major fires causes such haze. As of Wednesday, April 18, the dust had reached the Great Lakes Region. More dust is on the way as the Gobi dust storm continues. Scientists have been tracking the dust, or "aerosols," with at least three different satellites, including the GOES 8/10 weather satellites, the NASA Total Ozone Mapping Spectrometer and the NASA SeaWiFS ocean color sensor on the commercial Seastar satellite. Contained in the dust are also manmade pollutants, said Douglas Westphal of the Naval Research Laboratory in Monterey, Calif.