April showers bring 'dirty rain' to New England after storm absorbs
desert dust 2,000 miles away
[April 25, 2025]
By HOLLY RAMER
CONCORD,
N.H. (AP) — No, New England, that wasn’t a new strain of spring pollen
coating your cars. It was dust carried across the country in a
phenomenon known as “dirty rain.” |
Dirt and dust originating 2,000 miles away in the desert Southwest, is
seen on the windshield of a car in Portland, Maine, after being carried
by wind and mixing with rain Saturday, April 19, 2025. (Mike Hartford/WGME-TV
via AP) |
|
April showers are supposed to bring May flowers, but the light
rain that fell across the region last Friday and Saturday
brought dirt instead. Christian Bridges, a meteorologist with
WGME-TV in Portland, Maine, was as perplexed as anyone until he
checked the satellite imagery.
“You could see that dust got picked up in New Mexico two days
before on Thursday by the same storm system," he said. “It then
brought it up into the far northern part of the U.S. and then
eventually brought it all the way to New England.”
Strong wind brought the dust to an altitude of around 10,000
feet (3,000 meters), he said, below the level of rain clouds.
“So the rain kind of grabbed the dust as it was falling and
brought it down to the ground,” Bridges said. “It’s kind of cool
to think it was transported 2,000 miles (3,200 kilometers)
across the country.”
Parts of Wisconsin, Michigan and the northern Great Lakes region
also reported “dirty rain” or “mud rain” before it hit Maine,
New Hampshire and Massachusetts. Bridges said such rain is
unusual but not unprecedented and is similar to the way smoke
from Western wildfires makes it way east.
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