From the NASA Terra satellite Tuesday. Note the thick smoke and dust from the UK across Germany and into Russia and even Finland. Click image for much larger version.

Thanks to other NASA satellites and the NASA GEOS 5 model, you can see where the smoke is and where the Saharan dust is. Note that it originates from the fires in Portugal where the dust is from empty wastes of the Sahara. All of this was pulled northward as it was caught up in the circulation around Ophelia. Ophelia reached category 3 status and now holds the record for the strongest storm so far east in the Atlantic.

Smoke is green in the image above. This image is produced using aerosol sensors on polar-orbiting satellites.

As this mess moved across the UK yesterday it produced some rather apocalyptic skies and Jason Samenow at the Washington Post has some of the images here. I think we will see some more images of strange skies soon across Europe. Oh, and check out Jonty Wilson’s video of the wind blowing the waterfall backwards in Cumbria.

It’s been a WILD hurricane/fire season. You’d almost think the climate was changing…