During the 9-hour period of most vigorous activity on May 18, 1980, Mount St. Helens dumped more than 540 million tons of ash over an area of more than 22,000 square miles.

Space Dust: USGS estimates 1,000 tons of material enters the atmosphere every year and makes its way to Earths' surface.

Blown dust: A 1999 study showed that African dust finds its way to Florida and can help push parts of the state over the prescribed air quality limit for particulate matter set by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. The dust is kicked up by high winds in North Africa and carried as high as 20,000 feet, where it's caught up in the trade winds and carried across the sea. Dust from China makes its way to North America, too.

Each year American vegetation sends out 1,000,000 tons of pollen into the air.

One million tons of Gobi Desert dust blow into Beijing each year. During a similar dust outbreak last year, the Associated Press reported that the visibility in Beijing had been reduced the point where buildings were barely visible across city streets.

April 14 1935 also known as Black Sunday, brought the worst single dust storm in the so-called Dust Bowl to western Kansas and the pan handles of Oklahoma and Texas. It arrived as a dense wall of blowing dirt that reached as high as 10,000 feet and moved at 60 mph

Note: This page is a collection of weather information from many sources.

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