Dust moving east from the northern Great Plains settled over Warren County Friday, covering the area with a light haze.

The dust cloud entered the area late Friday morning on the heels of a cold front that passed through Mississippi Wednesday, spawning an apparent tornado in Sharkey County that damaged two mobile homes and injured three people.

“This is fairly unusual,” said David Lamb, meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Jackson. “Dust has been carried by winds before, but not in this large an amount.”

He said the dust was picked up when the front crossed the Dakotas and Nebraska.

“There was a strong upper level system with the front, and they had 60, 70, 80 mph winds in those areas,” he said. “Those strong winds stirred that dust up and carried it east.”

He said the dust passed through Kansas, Oklahoma and Arkansas before reaching Mississippi on its trek east.