This photo shows ‘Lithometeors’ which the World Meteorological Organisation defines as suspension of dry particles in the atmosphere, in this case a sand haze because the extremely fine sand particles are individually invisible to the naked eye. However, being present in very huge quantities, these sand particles gave this photo an opalescent appearance. The larger sand particles are precipitated from the atmosphere well before reaching the Maltese Islands as the distance from North Africa is in the order of 450km from the Gulf of Gabes from where the dusty wind comes and is not able to pick up any more dust particles. The first thumbnail is a view of the dust haze against the sun from Rabat with the brownish appearance very clear to see. This dust haze was brought about by very extensive areas of low pressure extending from the UK all the way down to the Sahara desert via SW wind coming from the northern edge of the Sahara desert as per surface wind chart of the fourth thumbnail. The weather sounding shows the air profile over the Maltese Islands with a radiation inversion as the warm airmass travelled over a cooler sea making it more stable hence trapping the fine dust in the lowest layers of the atmosphere whilst the visible satellite image on the third thumbnail depicts the dust haze in the southern Mediterranean along with some high clouds.