Goodbye brownish, cloudy light: The thick layer of Saharan dust that still dominated Germany on Saturday has largely disappeared. “The highlight was yesterday,” said Felix Dietzsch, meteorologist at the German Weather Service (DWD) in Offenbach, on Sunday. “The Sahara dust has decreased significantly and is currently only over northeastern Germany.” The dust should also disappear over Brandenburg and Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania over the course of Sunday – “then it will be gone for good,” emphasized Dietzsch.
On Saturday, the daily average limit for fine dust (PM10) of particles with a diameter of less than 10 micrometers was significantly exceeded: According to Dietzsch, the limit of 50 micrograms per cubic meter of air was roughly three times exceeded. But such values for only a short period of time are harmless for healthy people, said the meteorologist.
According to the DWD, Sahara dust in the air is not a rare natural phenomenon in Central Europe. The particles are stirred up in the world‘s largest dry desert in North Africa and carried by the wind thousands of kilometers north – especially in spring and autumn. Such dust particles come to Europe about 5 to 15 times a year – but rarely in the concentrations like this weekend.
Sahara dust over Germany
According to Dietzsch, the reason for this intensity was a pronounced low pressure area over the Atlantic, on the side of which a very strong wind current transported the dust from the south to Central Europe – this also resulted in the strong Alpine foehn at the weekend. According to model calculations, 180,000 tons of Saharan dust hung over Switzerland alone on Saturday, according to a meteorologist. That’s about twice as much as usual for this natural phenomenon, it was said.
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According to the DWD expert, the so-called blood rain – when Sahara dust mixes with rain – largely did not occur in Germany. “There was little or no rain from the dust cloud,” said Dietzsch. Larger rainy areas only reached Germany after the dust had cleared away.