High Wind From the Sahara

Sometime today, tomorrow or Wednesday an enormous cloud of dust, roughly the size of the continental United States, will move across Florida.

Its origin?

The Sahara Desert.

Such dust clouds are not uncommon, say meteorologists, especially at this time of the year, when weather patterns called tropical waves pick up dust from the desert in North Africa, carry it a couple miles into the atmosphere and drift westward.

Such dust, if concentrated enough, "could effect people with respiratory problems," said Ken Larson, a natural resource specialist with the Broward County Environmental Protection Department, quoted in yesterday's Associated Press story.

What strikes me about such clouds is not the dust itself but, rather, what's traveling along with it.

How about infectious viruses?

Don't believe it?

Wait and see.

It's a small, small world and it's going to continue to contract until each and every one of us finally realizes there's nowhere to run, nowhere to hide.

Apologies to Martha and the Vandellas.

Africa's problems are not confined to that benighted continent but, rather, they're ours as well.