If you woke up to find your car covered in a mysterious dust this morning you weren't alone.

Cars across Harrow , and the South East in general, have been covered in a thin film of dust that has come here all the way from the Sahara Desert - so you have an excuse for having a car that'd tempt passers-by to write 'clean me' across the paintwork.

The yellow-red mineral powder is scooped up as winds cross the Sahara Desert in North Africa and then carried across Europe. It mixes with rain clouds and, as has happened overnight, is brought down in light rain showers leaving cars coated in a thin grime.

Bonnie Diamond, a Met Office spokeswoman confirmed that areas of north west London and across the South East England received a covering of Saharan Dust due to rainfall overnight between Tuesday (August 7) and Wednesday (August 8).

She told getwestlondon: "Anywhere that experienced rain last night will have been affected. We can confirm, after looking back through air flows over the past 24 hours, that air flows from Africa were carrying Saharan Dust."

Many cars were covered in filthy 'Saharan Dust' on Wednesday morning (August 8)

How does Saharan Dust get to the UK?

As in other parts of the world, the wind can blow strongly over deserts - whipping up dust and sand high into the sky. The wind in the upper part of the atmosphere then transports the dust in the direction in which it's travelling, sometimes towards the UK.

Once it is lifted from the ground by strong winds, clouds of dust can reach very high altitudes and be transported worldwide, covering thousands of miles.

In order for the dust to get from up in the sky down to the ground, you need something to wash it out of the sky - rain.

When the raindrops fall, they collect particles of dust on the way down. Then when the raindrops land on something and eventually evaporate, they leave behind a layer of dust.

For the latest weather updates, visit the Met Office .