File:Dust off Western Australia (MODIS 2023-12-12).jpg

English: On December 10, 2023, a long river of brick-red desert dust stretched westward from Central Australia and extended over the Indian Ocean. According to Weatherzone, at one time the plume measured about 1,800 km (1,118 miles) in length.

The Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA’s Aqua satellite acquired a true-color image of the unusual dust storm on December 10. The image focuses on Western Australia’s north-central coast, where a broad blanket of red dust is blowing toward the northwest. Some of the dust floats above Rowley Shoals, a group of three coral reefs. Smoke from several fires also mixes with the dust. One large gray smoke plume marks a fire burning near the city of Broome, in the north. A second smoke plume rises from a group of fires near Eighty Mile Beach.

The massive movement of dust was kicked up from the interaction of a trough that passed into northern Western Australia, a low pressure system near South Australia, and a high pressure ridge to the south. This complex pattern created strong, gusting southerly winds that lofted dust into the atmosphere and carried it across Western Australia’s Kimberly and Pilbara regions. It also brought cooler temperatures to those same regions, which are typically extremely hot in Australian summers.