Dust from the Sahara desert reached the island on Sunday, the island’s Met Office has confirmed.
A Met Office spokesman explained: ‘Towards the end of the month, warmer air originating from southern Europe and North Africa brought the month’s peak temperature of 14.3C on March 30, and also left some Sahara dust on the ground, brought down in showers.’
The weather summary for March concluded last month’s weather was ‘a lot better’ than March 2013.
‘After an exceptionally mild and wet winter, conditions settled closer to normal for March, and certainly a lot better than last March with its bitter cold and severe snow.’
The mean daytime maximum temperature was 10.3C, about 1C above the long term average. Overnight minima though were close to normal, with a mean of 4.5C.
The lowest temperatures were recorded on the morning of March 3, with minus 0.9C in the air, and minus 4.4C on the ground.
There were 10 nights in total with a ground frost.
Rainfall totalled 77.9mm, 17 per cent above the long term average of 66mm. The wettest day was March 28 with 14.2mm.
The sunniest day was March 11 with 10.6 hours burned onto the card. The total for the month was 137.7 hours, about 20 per cent above the long term average.
Winds were slightly above average with a mean of 14 knots. The strongest winds were on March 20, with gusts to 52 knots recorded at Ronaldsway.