A vast cloud of Sahara dust is blanketing the Caribbean with a size that experts say hasn’t been seen in half a century.

A vast cloud of Sahara dust is blanketing the Caribbean with a size  that experts say hasn’t been seen in half a century.

The mass of extremely dry and dusty air is known as the Saharan Air Layer and forms over the Sahara desert. It moves across the North Atlantic every three to five days during the northern hemisphere’s late spring to early autumn, peaking in late June to mid-August.

Air quality across most of the region reached record “hazardous” levels and experts who nicknamed the event the “Godzilla dust cloud” warned people to stay indoors and use air filters if they had them.