Heavy dew every morning for the past several weeks had concentrated areas of dust on our windows, and I was able to sample some of the areas and look the particles under a microscope. Most of it is of local origin, but we had received a considerable amount of dust from, of all places, Africa’s Sahara Desert.
I am guessing that some of the smaller, rounded particles in the photo may have been carried thousands of miles across the Atlantic Ocean by the wind and deposited with the dew on our windows. It seemed strange that a continent that we have never trod upon may have come to visit us, in a sense, and left its smudge marks on our windows.
The temperature is cooler now, the air much drier, and the windows are no longer coated with heavy dew each morning. Guess what we will be doing today…
#outofafrica #saharadesert #dust
