Thursday, January 27, 2011

Jan. 27 - Low wind high PM event - Mild day with low winds. Morning low at NMSU was 27F and high of 58F.

I drove down to El Paso Community College to hear EPA Administrator Jackson speak on environmental justice this morning. Here is her 5 minute speech below.

I saw a thick low level haze layer as I was driving and became dense as I approached the area around Vado. Some of it was road paving but I think most of it was part of a regional haze layer that continued south on I-10. Below is a video looking south to the meeting around 9:30 am.
 
On the drive back north to Las Cruces I could still see the haze layer but not as clear as when the sun was lower in the sky. I'm sure the low sun angle helped enhanced the haze but it looked pretty thick. We saw a evening, low wind, high PM event at the Sunland Park City Yard station. Peak hourly PM10 was 289 µg/m3 and PM2.5 was 69 µg/m3.
 At the core site in Las Cruces I had an operator error (myself) that caused us to miss this morning's hourly data collection of PM2.5. I hadn't tightened the spool of filter tape tight enough and it loosened up and eventually caused the tape to not advance. I'll learn from my mistakes. Anyway we saw the evening peak in both PM10 and PM2.5 with PM10 peaking at 99 µg/m3.
We also saw the low wind high PM signature at the NMED Anthony station.
In Deming we see the highest PM10 during the evening with a peak concentration of 79 µg/m3 at 7 pm.
The AQI forecast for Friday is calling for a 50 which is low but I've observed it creep up over time this week.

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