Dust blew across the Red Sea, from Africa toward the Arabian Peninsula, on May 26, 2011. The Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA’s Terra satellite captured this natural-color image at 10:55 a.m. Riyadh, or Ar Riyad, time (7:55 UTC) the same day.
The dust arises from the western side of the Red Sea. In places, the dust is thick enough to hide the ocean surface below. Source points for the dust plume are not apparent in this image, and the dust may have arisen from Saharan sand seas farther inland.
NASA image courtesy Jeff Schmaltz, MODIS Rapid Response Team at NASA GSFC. Caption by Michon Scott.
