"A large African dust cloud now stretches from the Sahara Desert all the way to the Gulf of Mexico. Meteorologist Travis Herzog says the swath of dry, dusty air is usually a signal that activity in the deep tropics will be minimal for the next couple of weeks. Currently, the National Hurricane Center shows no tropical development over the next five days."
Source: abc13.com
The animation from NASA below illustrates how dust plumes, in red, track westward across the Atlantic and into the Caribbean, Gulf of Mexico and into southern Texas July 17-24.
Animation of total aerosol optical thickness from July 17-24, 2017. The Saharan air layer (SAL) and embedded Saharan dust are shown in red tracking across the Atlantic Ocean basin into the Caribbean and Gulf of Mexico.
(NASA)