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Allgäu Alps: Sahara dust turns the light yellowish (archive image)
Photo: Jan Eifert / IMAGO
During Easter, an unusually large number of dust particles from the Sahara reach Germany with the wind. "The Sahara dust has already arrived, which you can see in the yellowish cloudiness in the air," said Christian Herold, meteorologist at the German Weather Service (DWD), on Holy Saturday.
The phenomenon can be observed in many parts of Germany, but is most concentrated in the west of the country. The desert dust can make the sunshine appear milky and cloudy. In Germany the phenomenon should still be visible on Easter Sunday. A cold front is expected to clear the dust on Monday, Herold said.
Sahara dust clouding the sky is more common in Central Europe. According to the DWD, dust particles from the desert are carried to Europe around 5 to 15 times a year. DWD meteorologist Herold assesses the current situation, but this is rather rare in terms of intensity. A good week ago, dust particles from the Sahara were also traveling across southern Europe, a satellite image from NASA shows.
The dust is kicked up in the world's largest dry desert in North Africa. The wind then carries the fine particles, sometimes thousands of kilometers to the north. This happens especially in spring and autumn.
Strong foehn storm in the Alps
Yellow-reddish Sahara dust also clouded visibility in large parts of Switzerland on Saturday; according to model calculations, the dust particles amounted to a total of 180,000 tons. Normally the wind brings half the amount to Switzerland, it was said.
On Saturday, a strong foehn storm with strong gusts swept across the Alps. Storm gusts with top speeds of 190 kilometers per hour were measured above Andermatt in Switzerland late on Friday evening, as the weather service SRF Meteo reported on Saturday. The stormy weather is expected to last slightly there until Easter Monday.
Because of the gusts of wind, lifts in some Swiss ski areas were temporarily switched off on Friday. Already on Thursday, chair lifts in the Italian ski resort of Breuil-Cervinia opposite Zermatt began to swing dangerously, as a video from the private Italian weather service Il Meteo showed.
»Föhn of the decade«
The meteorologist Jörg Kachelmann wrote on Saturday in an article for the Swiss Tamedia newspapers about the “Föhn of the decade”. Foothills could be felt as far away as the Swabian Alb in Baden-Württemberg. "This extreme event was made possible on the one hand by the large difference in air pressure between north and south, and on the other hand by the very high temperatures even outside the foehn, so that no heavy block of cold air had to be cleared away," wrote Kachelmann.
The storm damaged a historic steamship on Lake Geneva in western Switzerland. It had docked at a jetty in Cully in the canton of Vaud. Due to the swaying of the ship, there was sometimes a risk that the jetty could break. The police were on site with a large contingent on Saturday night to secure the ship and the jetty.
irb/dpa