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As the Saharan Air Layer (SAL) carries its dusty load from Africa to the Americas, the grains of dust reflect some of the sun’s heat, keeping the sea surface under the clouds cooler than it would otherwise have been. This cooling effect can block or slow the development of hurricanes, which need the updraft from warm water to gain strength. However, there is more to the relationship between dust clouds and tropical storms than just sea surface cooling.

The Sahara Dust season in the tropical Atlantic generally starts and finishes about a month ahead of the hurricane season. It produces spells of strange weather – there’s a thin haze that isn’t fog, sunrise and sunset produce big stretches of brilliant colour, and a thin film of dirt seems to be getting into everything.

The hurricane forecasting season reached its peak a couple of weeks ago, just as the storm season was about to get under way. NOAA delivered its 2017 outlook at the end of a week of public education, much of which was spent showing off a battery of new tools for observation and data processing. The agency gives a 70% probability to a season with 11–17 named storms of which 5–9 become hurricanes, with 2-4 major hurricanes.

The nation’s environmental managers are between a rock and a hard place. A clean healthy environment isn’t a luxury. It may be a matter of life and death. But it has no place in Government’s funding lineup, and Government has no money anyway. So we’re on our own and it’s time to stop complaining and go to work. Labour Day is a good time to start

Last week, drains became a hot button issue on both coasts. In Clarendon, residents and officials were still looking for someone or something to blame for an estimated $500 million in flood damage. In Falmouth, the mayor needed $8.5 million to do something about the “filthy” appearance of the town. In both cases, the local drains are getting most of the blame.

Since the beginning of the year, the Caribbean Institute for Meteorology and Hydrology has been forecasting a more or less normal shift from dry season to wet.

In the latter half of May it seemed there was just too much to think about. The COVID lockdowns and curfews continued.

Last Friday, Jamaica Environment Trust planned to launch the 2021 International Coastal Cleanup. The actual event is intended to take place over two days, Saturday September 18 and Sunday September 19, COVID restrictions permitting.

Every year on April 22, Earth Day asks us to take the environment personally. From its modest beginnings in 1970, the idea has grown and spread.

The official start of the Atlantic hurricane season is still six weeks away, though recent history suggests we could see at least one early storm.