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Health & Fitness

Lorton precipitation amounts July 29 - Aug 4, 2013; dust cloud suppresses hurricane development

For those planning to head to the beach this coming week, a dust cloud off the Sahara will prove to be your friend.  Tropical storm development in the Atlantic has been suppressed by a massive dust storm blowing out over the ocean, an s your chances of running into a hurricane this week are much less than usual for this time of year.  The dust acts to cool the ocean beneath it but heat the air containing it, blocking the sunlight from reaching the surface but absorbing the energy from it.  We know that warm air rises.  Also, the atmosphere generally gets cooler with altitude.  The dusty Saharan Air Layer is warmer than the air rising off the ocean, and so the parcel of air that was warm and rising (and working to build a thunderstorm) is instead relatively cooler and so sinks. Thunderstorms are formed from rising moist air, and when the air can’t rise, thunderstorms (and hurricanes) can’t form.  So the dust keeps the weather quiet.  But hazy!


My rain gauge in Lorton recorded 1.83” of rain last week.


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