Thunderstorms and dust invade the Bahamas
Thunderstorms and dust invade the Bahamas. Today’s Image of the Day from NASA Earth Observatory shows thunderstorms developing over Andros Island in the Bahamas.
Features of the shallow sea floor known as the Great Bahama Bank are also visible in the photograph.
In the distance beyond the storms, the Caribbean Sea and Atlantic Ocean are covered by a dull brown layer of dust from the Sahara Desert.
Two days before this photo was taken, the same dust mass was so large that it completely obscured the ocean from view for hundreds of miles, according to NASA. The Bahamas were inhabited by the Lucayans, a branch of the Arawakan-speaking Taíno people, for many centuries. Columbus was the first European to see the islands, making his first landfall in the ‘New World‘ in 1492. Later, the Spanish shipped the native Lucayans to and enslaved them on Hispaniola, after which the Bahama islands were mostly deserted from 1513 until 1648, when English colonists from Bermuda settled on the island of Eleuthera. Thunderstorms and dust invade the Bahamas
The image was captured on June 23, 2020 by an astronaut aboard the International Space Station (ISS).
Image Credit: NASA Earth Observatory
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By Chrissy Sexton, Earth.com Staff Writer
