The “Godzilla” dust storm missed the Keys and South Florida. The Giant Saharan Dust Cloud came off Africa and crossed the Atlantic in a few days. It approached the Keys from the south, and was probably closest to us on Wednesday.
Frankly, I don’t know why we were spared. I was ready for the next installment in what my friends and I call “2020 apocalypse bingo.” More on that later.
Dust storms originating in Africa and crossing the Atlantic Ocean are nothing new. What’s startling though is the size of it, prompting some media outlets to dub it “Godzilla.”
It’s 3,500 miles wide (Seattle to Guatemala City, if you’re wondering) and the dust storm is 2 miles deep.
“It just missed us,” said National Weather Service’s Jon Rizzo. “It went around the big Bermuda high pressure system.” What’s unusual, Rizzo said, is that it hasn’t petered out. It’s headed for Texas and then points north in mainland U.S.A.
Let’s just take a moment to review 2020: Australian bushfires burn what seems like the whole country; Kobe Bryant dies; city-size swarms of locusts descend on East Africa; pandemic; quarantine; collapse of the global economy; Britney Spears accidentally burned down her home gym; George Floyd is murdered by a cop in plain daylight; peaceful protests; violent riots; the ring-of-fire eclipse signaling what some call the end of the world; the U.S. government confirms UFO sightings and releases reports but nobody cares because, you know, COVID; 100-degree temperatures recorded in the Arctic, for crissake; the Sahara dust storm; my friend inhaled a big bug on our early-morning walk; the GMO mosquito debate/war is set to rage again; there is going to be a sh!tsh#w election in November; and me and many of my friends had severe unexplained headaches on Tuesday and Wednesday. Oh, wait, that was the Sahara thing probably.
All I can do is laugh through my mask.
P.S. I forgot the murder hornets.
