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Originally Posted by Duderock Janet seems to know all the ins and outs of this so will no doubt correct me if I'm wrong.
A Calima comes in from the East and is a warm wind filled with dust and sand. A Scirocco comes in from the South and is has much stronger winds and higher temperatures and often without the dust. |
Yes, Calima from the East, with sand particles blown straight across from the Moroccan Sahara. This is why Fuerteventura has the white-yellow sand dunes (and Gran Canaria too to some extent), because the calima obviously reaches the Eastern islands first. The Scirocco, by contrast, is a south south-easterly, which is why it's (often far) warmer ... but still with some Saharan sand in particles. There's less sand in a Scirocco because it has lost much in transit ... usually over the Cape Verde islands.
The Spanish tend to call both calimas, but technically, if you see a "calima" coming in from the south and/or west, it's actually a Scirocco.
The first pic below is a calima ... coming straight from the East. The second is a scirocco swirling out from Africa over Cape Verde, and coming up to the Canaries from the south-west.