A dust storm blew through northern Texas in late January 2012. High winds and poor visibility made driving treacherous around Lubbock, and forced the cancellation of flights at the Dallas-Fort Worth airport, news sources said.

The Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA’s Terra satellite captured this natural-color image on January 22, 2012. Dust plumes apparently arise from agricultural fields around Lubbock, and blow in a wide arc toward the northeast. Isolated red outlines indicate high surface temperatures associated with wildfires. The same high winds that stirred dust and canceled flights contributed to fire danger in the region, according to news reports.

The dust plumes that arose in the Western Sahara Desert on January 18, 2012, continued their westward journey the following day. On January 19, 2012, the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA’s Aqua satellite captured this natural-color image of a giant, crescent-shaped plume over the Atlantic Ocean.

North to south, the plume spans several hundred kilometers. Off the coast of Western Sahara, the dust forms a faint crosshatch pattern, which implies that dust particles blow in different directions at different altitudes. Most of the dust blows westward. Saharan dust frequently lands on the Canary Islands and Cape Verde, but also sometimes crosses the Atlantic Ocean to the Americas.