May 16

Warm and dry weather under ridge of high pressure over the borderland today. High of 84 in Las Cruces airport (KLRU). Clouds were building up over the Organ Mountains but I didn't see any precipitation. This afternoon's MODIS Aqua image shows our nice day with some convection over our area. Most of the precipitation in southern NM probably fell over the Sacramento Mountains and Sierra Blanca.

For fires, the Willow prescribed burn continued today. Winds take the plume northward into Grant County and toward the Gila Wilderness.

No major aerosols based on GASP aerosol optical depth. The MODIS AOD didn't show a product in our area. Lost of burning in Mexico along the west coast.

Looking at the local air quality data, there was a low wind high PM event in Sunland Park late last night and early this morning. PM10 reached about 391 ug/m3 and PM2.5 hit 76 ug/m3 and lasted about 4 hours. The 6 am sounding at Santa Teresa showed a strong stable layer.

From the observations at 9 pm, it looks like there might be another low wind event there tonight. I'll report on this tomorrow.