From the “don’t eat that orange snow” department and the NOAA NPP satellite comes this interesting weather effect.
Sahara Sand Dirties Eastern Europe’s Snow
This side-by-side comparison from the Suomi NPP polar-orbiting satellite shows snow-covered Eastern Europe before and after a plume of dust from the Sahara Desert blanketed the region over the weekend.
In the left hand image, snow cover over Moldova and Ukraine appears bright white; in the right image, the snow has a brown and orange tint due to Saharan dust settling over the region. Occasionally, strong southwesterly winds transport large quantities of sand from the Sahara northward across the Mediterranean Sea into Europe. This Saharan dust event was particularly intense, with widespread media reports of orange-tinted snow at ski resorts as far as away as southeast Russia, along the Black Sea.
Although true-color images like this may appear to be photographs of Earth, they aren’t. They are created by combining data from the three color channels on the VIIRS instrument sensitive to the red, green and blue (or RGB) wavelengths of light into one composite image. In addition, data from several other channels are often also included to cancel out or correct atmospheric interference that may blur parts of the image.
Video of snow in various places:
Queue Frank Zappa!
Do watch out where the huskies go but I fear that these huskies may have kidney problems hence the orange snow.
Thought the same thing, TRM.
Cheers
Huskies on the go. Proceed with caution.
[Huskie snow alert levels.
Yellow = High Threat Level, Discretion Advised.
Brown = Extreme Threat Level, Withdrawal Recommended.
Red = Beyond Threat Level, attack is already underway. .mod]
Red =
Guess this would have been appropriate for Halloween, blending with the pumpkins!
Aerosols strike again! We are doomed.
WorldView image of Saharan dust from Libya moving north over the Mediterranean Sea thanks to a 32 kn southerly moderate gale on 22 March 2018.
I wonder if the dust affected the amount of snow, as well as dirtying it.
Had to be caused by co2.
Mje.
Saw this on a newsfeed. I did a bit of research and it appears to be quite common. It’s attention catching, but not unusual.
Correct. Been happening since, well since before there was anyone around to notice.
It’s been happening every few years in the UK since I was a boy (a few years ago now!)
I wonder if Morocco’s agriculture is heading for a good harvest this year?
Worldview of Morocco for 15 March 2000
Compared with –
Worldview of Morocco for 23 March 2018
And here is some of the rain they have been getting this year Morocco 15 Mar 2018
It’s an ill wind that blows no one any good.
Now we can conflate the dirtiness of orange snow with the dirtiness of carbon, and then conflate the conflation to call it “carbon-snow pollution”.
It’s all dirty. I’m dirty. You’re dirty. The Earth is dirty. We’re all gonna die dirty.
That was today’s positive thought. /sarc … or should that be /snark
“Picture yourself in a boat on a river, With tangerine trees and marmalade skies…..”
Tangerine Dreams has a great album from 1990 called, “Melrose” that goes great with this orange snow event!
Agent Orange was bad stuff this is just sand.
https://earth.nullschool.net/#current/particulates/surface/level/overlay=duexttau/orthographic=-339.65,1.64,209
Obviously, Trump did it
I have seen the same phenomenon in Central Florida, where white wind-blown sand dunes on the Lake Wales Ridge in Polk County are strongly tinted orange by dust from the Sahara. But these are about 2 million years old, a bit prior to anthropogenic carbon dioxide.
The only thing they need is background music to enjoy the citrus colored snow.
Ahhh, the music of my youth…
Using Google Earth and the coordinates:
20.698, 21.9484
. . . the source of much red dust can be seen.
And here is the storm associated with a cold front moving east across the Sahara that took the sand north into eastern Europe on 22 March 2018
Iron(Fe) fortified snow!
Saharan dust reaches the UK at times, usually a mess of dust that is then splattered around by rain, or it’s in the rain too.
This happens in Colorado too when springtime dust from Arizona gets pulled into Colorado snow storms.
Not really usual at all.
Note that normally there shouldn’t be any snow to be dirtied. Snow in the lowlands in this area is very unusual this late in the spring.
So climate change is here. Note though, that this is dirty, rotten snow.
I ran out of goddamn firewood, and it was something like -12C last night. My feet ache. Please, gimme some local warming, quick.
It also brings fertilizer so don’t complain. See Amazon Basin benefit from the Sahara also.