Dust plumes blew off the west coast of northern Africa for the second consecutive day in late September 2008. The Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA’s Aqua satellite captured this image on September 29, 2008.

In this image, the dust plumes form an arc that stretches from Senegal in the south to Western Sahara in the north. The thickest plumes of dust are concentrated west of the Senegal-Mauritania border, and extend westward to Cape Verde, where a combination of dust and clouds obscure the satellite’s view of the archipelago.

The source points for this dust storm don’t appear in this image, but vast sand seas stretch from Mauritania north- and eastward into Mali and Algeria. At least some of the dust likely arose in that region.

NASA image created by Jeff Schmaltz, MODIS Rapid Response, NASA Goddard Space Flight Center. Caption by Michon Scott.

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