A cloudy “wall” today was seen by the inhabitants of the southern suburbs of Athens, and visitors to the area, who moved to the sea, taking advantage of high temperatures to swim.

The curious cloud created unusual images in a wide range of the coastal front, with citizens taking off their mobile phones to immortalize it. As the unusual phenomenon insisted after noon, many thought it was a transfer of African dust. However, according to Kostas Lagouvardos, a meteorologist – research director at the Athens National Observatory (meteo.gr), it was not a dust, but a fog that spread from Kythera to the Saronic Gulf, and which, due to the hiding of the Sun. the southern suburbs.

“What we saw in the Saronic Gulf and further south was not dust, but fog. We have dust transfer to the Eastern Mediterranean region but I would say more in the west of our country. There is also dust, but in greater heights, not near the ground, ”explains Lagouvard.

According to Kostas Lagouvardo, this phenomenon we saw today in south of Athens “was what we call a transport fog. That is, when you have hot air, such as these days due to the hot air masses that pass over the still cold sea, the water vapor are concentrated in the air, that is, they pass through the liquid, and form this cloud, the cloud that rests on the sea and creates the fog. We had no strong winds and the fog remained. “

But what is the difference with the “normal” fog that usually occurs at dawn?

Kostas Lagouvardo points out that “the fog we see in the mornings is the radiation fog. What happens when you are over the land, and when you have days when the soil is very cold in the morning, you have the corresponding phenomenon above the land. We usually see this in closed areas such as Ioannina, or in northern Greece. In the northern areas of Attica, also colder, it has the early morning fog, the radiation fog, which is created as the air that rests on the surface because we have fairly low temperatures (in the early morning hours). The earth radiates, cools down and therefore creates this phenomenon. Usually the fog of radiation is above the land and when we see large areas above the sea they are transporting fog. In satellite photos today we see a very big fog, a large piece that begins virtually a little east of Kythera and reaches the Saronic Gulf, “says Kostas Lagouvardos.