NM Border Air Quality Blog

Dec. 29 - High winds are forecasted for today and again on Thursday. Today's 20-km RUC2 wind speed at 21 UTC (2 pm) shows a widespread area of high winds in southwest NM.

A portion of the National Weather Service statement this morning on the storm is as follows

* WINDS...SOUTHWEST WINDS 25 TO 35 MPH WITH GUST TO 45 MPH THIS
  AFTERNOON...AND SOUTHWEST 35 TO 45 MPH WITH GUSTS TO 60 MPH
  THURSDAY AFTERNOON.

* TIMING...WINDS INCREASING TO 25 TO 35 MPH LATE THIS MORNING INTO
  THE AFTERNOON. WINDS WILL DECREASE TO 20 TO 30 MPH BY EARLY THIS
  EVENING. ON THURSDAY WINDS WILL INCREASE OUT OF THE SOUTHWEST TO
  35 TO 45 MPH WITH GUSTS TO 60 MPH. AGAIN THE WINDS WILL DECREASE
  BY EARLY EVENING TO 20 TO 30 MPH.

* VISIBILITY...BLOWING DUST IS LIKELY BOTH DAYS WITH FREQUENT
  VISIBILITIES OF AROUND 5 MILES...WITH LOCAL VISIBILITIES OF ONE
  MILE OR LESS IN DENSE BLOWING DUST. POOR VISIBILITIES ARE LIKELY
  TO HAVE THE BIGGEST EFFECT SOUTH OF HATCH ALONG THE INTERSTATE
  10/INTERSTATE 25 CORRIDORS AND VARIOUS OTHER ROADWAYS.

At 9 am winds were light in the range of 5 mph on campus.

At 3 pm PM is starting to increase at the core site in Las Cruces.

Not much visible dust looking west early in the afternoon as seen from the NMSU cam. Clouds covered most of the day keeping us from using satellite remote sensing.

Particulates at Sunland Park City Yard were very high this afternoon and evening due to high winds and  blowing dust. The first peak of PM10 was at 733 µg/m3 and PM2.5 at 42 µg/m3 at 1 pm. The second highest hourly PM10 was at 11pm with PM10 of 878 and PM2.5 of 49 µg/m3.

The NMED Deming airport station is also seeing some blowing dust today with an hourly PM10 at 2 pm of 204 µg/m3.