Anyone who is deciding to wash their car and then keep it on the road is warned: the peak of a sandstorm coming from the Sahara. And, therefore, you could find the car completely dirty without enjoying the clean bodywork for even a moment. And whoever finds themselves having to sweep the balcony or terrace should know that they might do it soon, again, because they will find themselves faced with a layer of dust on the floor. Already yesterday, many motorcyclists and motorists noticed the patina of dust that has settled on the vehicles and which increasingly characterizes the changes of season even in Central Italy. According to the forecasts of Meteo Lazio, today there will be the peak of this Saharan storm, with a precipitation of sand that will exceed a thousand micrograms per square meter. “It’s a really high, if not exceptional, amount of dust,” he comments Gabriele Serafinifounder of Meteo Lazio and member of Ampro, the professional weather association.
FORECASTS
Arpa Lazio has also detected the phenomenon and already yesterday defined the concentration of PM10 particulate matter caused by desert dust practically throughout the region as very bad. Today the condition will still be very bad in a large part of the Province of Latina and the southern area of the Roman coast and, in the city, the area between Laurentino, Eur and Ostia. The presence of PM10 derived from desert sand dragged into the heart of Europe by winds blowing in a northerly direction will lead to poor quality air in the rest of the city and the region. «It is a fairly recurring phenomenon in spring when the atmosphere at these latitudes begins to undergo changes due to the passage of the season – continues Serafini – there are still depressions that manage to reach as far as the Iberian peninsula and the Mediterranean basin enough to reach, therefore, also Italy.”
The grip of Sahara dust on Rome, however, is expected to slow down in the coming weeks. It all depends on various meteorological factors, which therefore affect the journey of sand particles from the Sahara along the entire Mediterranean to then end up deposited in Europe. «As we get closer to the summer season, the anticyclones also manage to reach Central Europe and protect us from these massive upwellings of sand which usually occur during transition periods such as spring – Serafini explains further – In summer, with these quantities and this frequency, it is a little more difficult for all this to happen, however when the anticyclone extends from the subtropical regions there is a smaller quantity of Saharan dust that enters the lower layers of the atmosphere and does not determine these deposits as massive on the ground.” Saharan dust can travel over very long distances and has different trajectories: the Mediterranean is one of these, but North and South America are also the destination of the dust from the African desert. The trajectory that hits Rome is northwards driven by the sirocco: with the rains the dust then settles across the entire basin. «The dust irritates the upper respiratory tract. They can transport other substances found in the air, substances of chemical-physical origin, toxic-harmful and even viruses”, says Alessandro Miani, president of Sima, the Italian Society of Environmental Medicine.
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