BATON ROUGE — Warmer weather isn’t all Louisianans will be seeing as summer ramps up. More Saharan dust plumes are expected to move into the area this week, and there could be more as the season goes on. According to Louisiana State Climatologist Jay Grymes, these plumes have always been around, but advances in satellite technology are making them easier to see.
Grymes offered what he said is a third grade explanation of the plumes. “Huge gusts of wind blow across the Sahara. It lifts up the dust and puts it up into the upper atmosphere, and then that just drifts from east to west in the natural flow of the atmospheric circulation,” Grymes explained. “There’s not a fixed rhythm. It’s not like every three days or so, but we’ll see these little bursts, these plumes, if you will, coming across once, maybe twice a week. But as we get deeper into the summer, the bursts will become less frequent.”
In addition to hurricane season, there is also plume season, according to Grymes, and the two coincide with each other.
“The plume season is typically early into hurricane season. So you’ll see people talk about how that plays into sometimes suppressing tropical activity, especially early in the season,” Grymes said. “What tends to happen is ultimately those plumes start to get thinner and thinner. They become more erratic, and then by the time we’re in the late July and early August, they effectively are gone.”
Grymes went on to say in terms of their overall impact on the hurricane season during the peak of the season, the plumes tend to be pretty insignificant.
Rising temperatures across southern Louisiana
A massive dome of high pressure has been sitting over the eastern United States, heating things up from Louisiana all the way up into New England. And while Louisianans are no strangers to heat, Grymes said temperatures are at or a little above average for this time of year.
“You factor in the humidity, and it is very unpleasant out there,” said Grymes. “This is not record breaking heat by any stretch for Baton Rouge. We’re just going to be right on this cusp of temperatures that are going to flirt with heat advisory criteria. That means the heat index getting up to around 108.” Grymes said he believes the highest heat index recorded in Baton Rouge is 119 degrees.
Staying cool as temperatures heat up
When it comes to staying safe throughout the hot summer months, Grymes suggests preparing now, before it gets too hot.
“The biggest thing right now is to make sure that your AC unit has been serviced, because if it goes down, you are going to be in a world of hurt,” Grymes advises. “We get into these really excessive heat spells and and we will have times where that heat index gets up in the 110s one 112s, 115s. And when the humidity is up, it doesn’t cool off at night, so your air conditioner may be asked to run even longer than normal, and that’s where you get into trouble.”
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