Piling everyone into the car the other morning as I set off to drive away, I realised that I couldn’t see anything through the windscreen, “What the heck?”  It looked remarkably as if we had woken up in Dubai and got into the truck after some Middle Eastern rain.  The windscreen appeared to be covered in dried ‘wet sand’.  Given the fact that I was on the school run, windscreen wipers ensured I could see where I was going and I didn’t give it further thought, until I heard the news.  I wasn’t going mad, the car was indeed covered in a layer of Saharan sand.

It seem that strong winds blowing over the Sahara  had whipped up sand and then the winds had carried this across to the UK.  As rain fell from the sky, the water droplets picked up the dust in the atmosphere with the result that the falling rain was ‘dirty’.  Amazing!