Yesterday morning when we looked out our front window, Jan and I both exclaimed that the sky looked weird. Like, really weird. That’s because it was uniformly coloured a light orange. Hmmm.
A bit later, when I went out to take away the garbage and recycling, I noticed that both our cars were completely speckled in a light grey-orange powder, stuck to the cars because they were wet from the night’s rain.
Then the light went on in my wee brain, and my deduction has since been confirmed by various news reports: The orange sky was caused by clouds of dust and sand from the Sahara desert — blown across the Mediterranean by strong winds, eventually to drop to earth in southern France. This has happened before, but never so dramatically in the 10 years we’ve been living in the Greater Daglan Area.
A sign of spring: On a jolly note, the other day Jan and I noticed that snowdrops had started pushing up through the ground, and flowering. The French cleverly call the flowers perce-neige, because they are able to “pierce” a thin layer of snow. But we’re not having any snow these days, so I guess the snowdrops are having an easy time of it. Here’s one of the plants in bloom, with other flowers starting to push up as well:
In all the years, I never thought of saying hello this way.
I am glad you guys are well.
We get Sahara dust in BVI. But not at this time of the year. Last year it was very thick and around for a few weeks or more. There were many days of hazy sky, which was not haze but dust.
Everything inside and outside the house needed cleaning after it ended. Literally it covers everything.
I hope you see more spring flowers soon.
Stay safe,
Barry
Great to hear from you Barry.Cheers!
We got that Saharan dust one time here. Imagine that !!!
Wow! Long-distance dust!