The haze turns the Andalusian sky orange

Calima in the Campo de Gibraltar, this Thursday, March 24. Marcos Moreno

The dust from the Sahara has returned for the second time in a few days to the provinces of southeastern Andalusia and to Melilla.

In Andalucía, Almería, Granada and Málaga, mainly, and to a lesser extent Cádiz, have seen their skies turn orange at noon and early afternoon on Thursday, in an episode that is expected to be shorter and milder than the previous one, which It lasted almost four days.

The State Meteorological Agency (Aemet), in its prediction for Thursday, March 24, circumscribed the haze to the southeast of the peninsula and the autonomous city, although "without ruling out other areas of the Peninsula or the Balearic Islands."

This same prediction offered a 100% chance of rain, which suggests a new weekend of cleaning streets and walls.

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Photogallery: The passage of the haze through southern Spain

The haze episode is joined by a strong storm.

A man has died and another has been seriously injured after the fall of a palm tree in Almería.

A few minutes after two in the afternoon, the gusts of wind have caused the tree to collapse on the avenue of Cabo de Gata in the capital of Almeria, hitting a car and a motorcycle that were traveling on the road.

The two occupants of the car have been trapped inside and have had to be released by firefighters, one of them, 60 years old, very serious, for which he has been transferred to the Torrecárdenas hospital, where he remains admitted to the ICU.

The 56-year-old motorcycle driver was also taken to the hospital, where he died around five in the afternoon.

The haze will move towards the northeast of the peninsula until Saturday, when it will possibly disappear from Spain and reach the south of France, Corsica and Sardinia and western Italy.

For Friday, the Aemet maintains the possibility of haze in the third of the peninsular southeast and extends it to the Balearic Islands.

On Saturday, according to the same source, it is possible that the haze will move to the eastern Mediterranean area and the Ebro Valley, while the agency considers it "likely" that it will reach the Pitiusas Islands, Ibiza and Formentera.

The forecast for Sunday no longer makes any mention of this haze episode.

A few hours after appearing in the Granada sky, the rain has begun, scarce in the capital and more sustained in some points in the interior of the province, with which the mud has once again been seen when the streets and facades still showed signs of the haze episode that occurred last week.

The Sierra Nevada

once again offered a ghostly view of the ski slopes.

View of the Farola and the port of Malaga, which this Thursday has been covered by the effect of the calima.Garcia-Santos

The coasts of Almería, Granada and Cádiz, meanwhile, remain on orange alert due to rain until early Friday morning.

In Cádiz there have been various incidents related to the flooding of homes and even pools of water on the road, as has happened on the A-381.

One of the incidents has been the detachment of large rocks from a hillside that have fallen on some inhabited houses in Benaocaz (695 inhabitants), in the Sierra de Cádiz.

Although the mishap has not caused injuries, the residents of the area have been evicted due to the risk of more landslides.

In Malaga, the rains have joined an important episode of haze.

The early morning was filled with intense rains and the Saharan dust in the afternoon painted the skies of the entire Costa del Sol orange. accustomed to a much more benign spring every time they visit the film competition.

"It was apocalyptic, the atmosphere had something unreal," explained documentary filmmaker Jorge Peña as he walked along the red carpet installed in the center of the city.

Despite the bleak forecasts, the rain has hardly caused any incidents in the province.

In anticipation, the Junta de Andalucía activated a pre-emergency phase on Wednesday night due to the risk of flooding.

In addition to some incidents on various roads due to landslides, the increase in the flow of riverbeds and streams has caused the closure of numerous fords in the surroundings of Estepona to avoid incidents, as well as the roads that connect Estepona with Genalguacil (where some twenty neighbors were left incommunicado due to the poor condition of the access roads to their scattered homes) and El Burgo and Ardales.

In this municipality, the flooding of the Turón River forced the preventive eviction of three families with the help of the Civil Guard.

The City Council also

The province of Malaga will remain on yellow alert for rain and coastal phenomena throughout the night, with the exception of the regions of the Costa del Sol and the Guadalhorce Valley.

Both will remain on orange alert until noon on Friday, with a forecast that up to 80 liters per square meter will accumulate in twelve hours.

The effect of the haze transcends the stains on the facades and the peculiarity of the sky and can be especially annoying for people with respiratory diseases.

At six o'clock on Thursday afternoon, Almería capital, El Ejido, Motril, and the city of Málaga had their air quality index marked as "extremely unfavourable".

The city of Granada and its outskirts and Cártama (Málaga) had a "very unfavorable" air.

In Almería, the air quality of Carboneras was designated as “unfavourable”.

Alberto Caballero Vázquez, pulmonologist at the Virgen de las Nieves University Hospital in Granada, explained that the particles of sand and dust from the Sahara can worsen respiratory pathologies such as chronic bronchitis or chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, bronchial asthma, and lead to to pictures of bronchial hyperactivity that cause symptoms such as wheezing when breathing, coughing or feeling short of breath.

The recommended measures are the use of a mask and, of course, avoiding physical activity outdoors.