NM Border Air Quality Blog

Dec 2 - LOW WIND EVENT - High PM10 and PM2.5 at the Sunland Park sites. The plot below shows hourly PM at the City Yard site with the evening event. This event started at 5 pm and lasted all evening.

I was driving back from the El Paso airport around 11 pm and noticed the entire El Paso area under a haze. A few times I smelled burning. The haze could be seen north past Anthony. I also saw some haze across Las Cruces as well but not as visible. Particulates measured at the Desert View site are shown below but with much less intensity. Recall that these two sites are separated by only 2.5 km. The first big spike of PM occurred at 5 pm with PM10 of 200 µg/m3 and PM2.5 at 25 µg/m3.

 

We see high PM at Anthony as well with PM10 peaking around 168 ug/m3 at 6 pm.