The Post and Courier (Charleston, South Carolina), with support from the Pulitzer Center, has released an investigation into the significance of the Sahara Desert on hurricanes on the East Coast. Reporter Tony Bartelme and Photojournalist Andrew Whitaker traveled to Senegal to report on the story.
“Hurricanes have shaped and defined Charleston’s history for centuries, sometimes you have to go far to tell a local story, and in this case, we had to go to West Africa,” Bartelme says. “This project is different from many others, in part, because we highlighted the work of West African scientists, the people who breathe the dust they study.”
Bartelme and Whitaker met with several researchers in Senegal while reporting on this story. One of the biggest challenges they faced was the language barrier, as many of the researchers either spoke French or Wolof. In order to represent these voices, The Post and Courier has translated the story in French, which you can find here.
Publisher and President, P.J. Browning reiterated one of the main forces driving the work the paper continues to do, “Our goal is to bring home stories that affect every single one of our readers. And what’s more important than the forces that shape our hurricanes? The more we learned about hurricanes, the better prepared we can be.”
This story is a continuation of The Post and Courier’s commitment to going wherever they need to go to report on a local story. In 2021, Bartelme and Photojournalist Lauren Petracca traveled to Greenland in search of an explanation for the rising waters in Charleston. This investigation, The Greenland Connection, has won several national awards
Read the story The Sahara Connection: Will hurricanes hammer the East Coast? For more information on The Post and Courier’s coverage of hurricane season, please subscribe to the Hurricane Wire newsletter here. The Pulitzer Center supported this story through its Connected Coastlines project. To support more high-quality journalism like this, subscribe to The Post and Courier today.
