Sahara Desert Dust May Bring Stunning Sunsets To Middle Tennessee

NASHVILLE, TN -- A trail of sand thousands of feet in the atmosphere and stretching thousands of miles across the Atlantic Ocean from the Sahara to Texas may curl into Tennessee this weekend, bringing hazy skies and stunning sunsets to the Volunteer State.

While the Saharan dust trail isn't terribly unusual, scientists at the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration said this year's plume is among the largest in recent years, which, among other things, has kept the Atlantic hurricane season relatively calm, as dust settling in the upper atmosphere suppresses storms in the warmer, more humid layer below.

It took just a week for the large plume to travel from Western Africa to coastal Texas. One forecast model from Greece's University of Athens shows the plume stretching out of Texas, across Arkansas and Mississippi and into West and Middle Tennessee by Saturday.

Most of the dust has its beginnings in the Bodele Depression, the remains of an ancient lake in Chad at the southern end of the Sahara. The Bodele averages 100 dust storms annually and the surrounding geography carries nutrient-rich soil across the ocean. The hundreds of millions of tons of Saharan soil helps fertilize the Amazon rainforest and, over millions of years, helped form the beaches of the Caribbean.

Sunsets should be particularly beautiful as the sand pushes into Tennessee, coming from the west as it is, but it could have a negative impact on air quality and visibility as well, NOAA says.

Subscribe to Nashville Patch for more local news and real-time alerts

Photo by David McNew/Getty Images