Purple haze all in the Caribbean......

At various times of the year, the Caribbean can be covered in thick haze which makes it difficult to see very far at all. Many people looking at things like web cams will think that what they are seeing is just a cloudy day, but most of the time in the spring and summer months what they are seeing is haze caused by African dust or the Saharan Air Layer (SAL) as it is called in meteorological circles. Check this photo from today's Saharan Air Layer (SAL) Analysis:

As you can see, the dust coloured in orange and yellow, is covering the eastern Caribbean as it comes over the Atlantic from Africa. I just took a photo on my HTC and uploaded it to my twitter page for you to see the stuff. Click here for that photo. Pro photographers hate this haze as it can make for fairly flat images, but to be honest, that's the least of the problems this dust can cause. I wrote a long detailed blog about it with a pretty good explanation about it all in 2007. Click here to learn more about African Dust in the Caribbean.