Scattered chance through Tuesday evening for heavy rain, winds, hail

There is a chance for thunderstorms, some of them severe, through about 11 p.m. Tuesday night, WRAL meteorologist Mike Maze said. The greatest threat is for heavy rain, small hail and damaging winds.

"It's not a huge chance for storms, and it isn't something that is going to last all night," Maze said.

Much of North Carolina is under a Level 1 risk for storms, but in Raleigh that chance is only 40%, which means not everyone will see storms.

Before the storms, Tuesday will warm again into the 90s under mostly cloudy skies.

Behind the front, temperatures barely cool down, with forecast lows in the high 80s Wednesday and Thursday. The chance of storms returns Thursday afternoon.

For the weekend, precipitation is less likely, although skies will remain mostly cloudy and high temperatures in the 90s.

Massive Saharan dust cloud to move across southeast US this week

During a dust cloud last year, people posted photos of vibrant sunsets on social media. In one photo, from Jupiter, Florida, Steve Weagle, chief meteorologist for WPTV, described a bright pink and yellow sunset as a “fire in the sky.”

Satellite images from the last few days show the thick dust as a brown mass moving off the west coast of Africa, crawling across the Atlantic and then drifting over the eastern Caribbean on Sunday. The mass is expected to arrive in the Gulf Coast states, including Texas and Louisiana, on Wednesday and Thursday.