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Massive dust plume from Sahara Desert to bring hazy skies to Florida, Texas

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Massive dust plume from Sahara Desert to bring hazy skies to Florida, Texas


HOUSTON — A massive plume of dust from Africa’s Saharan Desert is blowing across the entire Atlantic Ocean this week, set to reach the shores of Florida and Texas in the coming days and casting a haze over typically blue skies.

The plume is currently forecast to skirt South Florida late Friday night into early Saturday morning, then push into the Gulf of Mexico over the weekend.

Eventually, the plume is forecast to move into Southeast Texas Sunday into Monday, with Corpus Christi and perhaps Houston likely to see some of the effects.

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Coastal communities along the Florida Peninsula and the Gulf Coast are accustomed to seeing plumes of Saharan dust over the summer, which can impact air quality, produce colorful sunrises and sunsets, and reduce the chances of precipitation.

182 million tons of dust a year carried away from Africa

As daily triple-digit heat bakes the Saharan Desert, hot, dry air rises from the surface and carries fine particles of dust from the sands. That dust-laden air climbs to the highest reaches of the atmosphere, where winds called the Easterlies or Trade Winds (blowing from east to west) carry that dust about 3,000 miles across the Atlantic Ocean into the Western Hemisphere in what’s known as the Saharan Air Layer (SAL).

5 THINGS TO KNOW ABOUT THE SAHARAN DUST PLUME

According to NASA, about 182 million tons of dust leave Africa every year, though that amount can vary depending on the amount of rainfall south of the Sahara region.

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Depending on the amount of dust being carried by the plume, air quality can be drastically affected. This means that people who have certain types of breathing problems can experience difficulty. People in the path of the plume can also experience eye, nose and throat irritation because of the fine dust particles in the air, according to WebMD.

The dry air from the hot, sandy desert also works to suppress tropical development and significant plumes of dust and dry air are common in the Atlantic during the first two and a half months of the hurricane season.

However, the current situation is a bit unusual in that there is quite a bit of tropical activity percolating in the Atlantic even with a significant dust layer.

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Invest 95L and another tropical disturbance just to its east are holding positions just south of the dust layer, and are feeding off available moisture to their south to skirt the edges of the dust layer as they trek west. 

However, the dust layer may become an important variable in the storms’ future development depending on their track.



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Triple-digit heat returns to North Texas before weekend storms bring relief

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Triple-digit heat returns to North Texas before weekend storms bring relief


A building system of high pressure is bringing triple-digit temperatures back to North Texas, though the intense heat will be short-lived before a weekend weather shift brings relief and renewed chances of rain.

Wednesday forecast

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We expect partly to mostly sunny skies Wednesday, with high temperatures reaching near 100 degrees across much of the region. While hot and dry conditions will dominate, a low chance of scattered rain showers remains possible, primarily in areas east of the Dallas-Fort Worth metroplex.

The heat is expected to solidify Thursday as the upper-level ridge settles firmly over the area. We have removed all chances of precipitation from Thursday’s forecast, locking in dry conditions and an afternoon high temperature of 100 degrees.

However, relief is on the horizon for the upcoming weekend. The high-pressure ridge will lose its grip on North Texas as it begins to shift westward toward the desert southwest.

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Weekend forecast

By late Saturday and continuing into Sunday, the atmospheric shift will establish a northerly flow aloft. This pattern change is expected to funnel a series of weather disturbances into the region, triggering a return of widespread rain and thunderstorm opportunities.

The unsettled weather pattern is forecast to linger well into next week. The persistent cloud cover and moisture associated with the continuing rain chances will successfully suppress the heat, keeping afternoon highs closer to historical norms for this time of year.

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7-Day forecast

The Source: Information in this article is from the FOX 4 weather team.

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US immigration officer shoots and kills man in Texas

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US immigration officer shoots and kills man in Texas


Man, identified as Lorenzo Salgado Araujo, is latest to be killed by ICE officers since President Trump took power.

A United States immigration agent fatally shot a man in Houston, Texas, while officers were attempting to stop his vehicle, US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) said.

The man killed on Tuesday was identified as Lorenzo Salgado Araujo, described by ICE as a Mexican national and “illegal alien” who attempted to evade arrest during a “targeted enforcement operation” by federal immigration officers.

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Ronaldo Salgado, who identified himself as Salgado Araujo’s son, told the Spanish-language television station Telemundo Houston that his father was shot while he was looking for workers to hire in the area.

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS), which oversees ICE, said Salgado Araujo ignored commands to stop his vehicle, saying he “rammed an ICE law enforcement vehicle, refused to follow multiple verbal commands, and weaponized his vehicle in an attempt to run over an ICE law enforcement officer”. ⁠

In past shooting incidents, including the January killings of Renee Good and Alex Pretti, immigration officials had said that their officers were being attacked when the two were shot, claims vigorously disputed in both incidents.

Video footage captured on Tuesday by a surveillance camera from a nearby business and reviewed by the Reuters news agency showed a person lying on the ground beside a white van and surrounded by officers, in what appeared to be the aftermath of the shooting.

Salgado Araujo was targeted in an operation because he was living in the country without legal permission, according to DHS.

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Democratic US Representative Sylvia Garcia called for an independent and thorough investigation of ICE’s claims about the fatal shooting.

“All available footage, communications, and other evidence should be preserved and reviewed as part of a full and impartial investigation,” Garcia posted on social media.

Juan Proano, CEO of the League of United Latin American Citizens, echoed Garcia’s calls for a transparent investigation into ICE’s actions.

“We don’t take DHS at their word at all,” Proano told The Associated Press news agency. “There should be an independent investigation, and they should release all the videos.”

There have been at least six fatal shootings by federal immigration officers since the start of President Donald Trump’s intensified immigration enforcement crackdown.

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Good, a 37-year-old US citizen, was shot in the head by a federal immigration agent during a crackdown in Minneapolis. DHS also said Good was trying to hit the agent with her vehicle, which local officials and witnesses disputed, saying she was only trying to drive away.

The backlash from Good’s killing and other similar incidents led ICE to step back from some of its more controversial operations.

However, Tuesday’s deadly ⁠confrontation in Houston came amid a recent increase in the number of ICE arrests nationwide, with immigration officers picking up about 2,000 migrants a day last week, Reuters reported.



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Trump takes credit for Toyota moving some truck production from Mexico to Texas: ‘That’s what tariffs do’

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Trump takes credit for Toyota moving some truck production from Mexico to Texas: ‘That’s what tariffs do’


Toyota is planning a $3.6 billion expansion of its Texas truck assembly plant. President Donald Trump took credit for the investment.

On Monday, the automaker announced the multibillion-dollar investment to add a second vehicle assembly line at its San Antonio manufacturing campus to support production of the Tacoma pickup. Toyota said the expansion project would shift some of the midsize truck’s production from its Mexico plants to San Antonio over roughly 4 years. Toyota will still build some Tacoma models and the Corolla in Mexico.

While Toyota did not attribute the expansion to tariffs in its announcement and the company is not fully exiting production in Mexico, Trump said the fresh investment was a sign that his tariffs were working.

“It came over the wires that Toyota is moving out of Mexico into the United States, and building one of the biggest truck and car plants ever built,” Trump said on Tuesday during a visit to Ankara, Turkey. “It’s amazing. That’s what tariffs do, properly used.”

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Toyota said the investment will create 2,000 jobs and add 2.5 million square feet to the site, doubling the company’s Texas footprint by 2030.


Toyota's Texas plant on a sunny day.

Toyota says its plant will hire 2,000 new workers to support the assembly line. 

Toyota



On Monday, Ted Ogawa, president and CEO of Toyota Motor North America, said the investment reflected the company’s “confidence in the region’s workforce, innovation, and long-term growth potential.”

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The move gives Trump a high-profile example of a well-recognized company creating manufacturing jobs. His administration has argued that tariffs incentivize companies — particularly automakers — to reshore manufacturing in America and reduce reliance on foreign production.

Toyota’s announcement also comes amid major uncertainty for automakers with plants in North America. The USMCA — the trilateral free trade pact between the US, Canada, and Mexico struck during Trump’s first term — is under review after the US declined to renew the treaty in its current form on July 1. The Trump administration is reportedly pushing to change the agreement so 50% of all automotive parts and manufacturing would happen in the US.

Toyota also nodded to that trade uncertainty in its release, saying it remained committed to operations in all three countries while encouraging “a quick resolution to USMCA” to keep North America globally competitive.





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