A very unusual dust plume generated from dust-storm activities over the Arabian Peninsula and Southwest Asia affected the north-west region of India between March 20 and 23, 2012, causing significant reductions in air quality and consequently changes in meteorological parameters. Ground based measurements of aerosol optical depth at 500 nm reached 1.015 ± 0.24 and 0.837 ± 0.042 at Jodhpur while Angstrom exponent dropped to -0.030 and -0.065 on March 20 and 21, 2012 respectively. The AOD reached 0.959 in Delhi while Angstrom exponent dropped to 0.006 on March 21, 2012.