Saturday, March 12, 2011

March 12 - Only reached a low of 45F at NMSU this morning. The LC airport started with a 52 for a low and high of 75F. High in Deming was 78F.

Not much winds expected today. Here is the forecast from the RUC 18Z run for winds at 18 UTC (11am) today.

There were a few wind gusts in the afternoon but I didn't see any significant dust activity. I was in Deming in the morning and at Rock Hound State Park in the afternoon and didn't see any dust except for only an isolated field in east Deming at 2:40pm.
Looking at the NAAPS global air quality model prediction, I see some long range transport of smoke aerosols reaching the southwest. No information on the height of this aerosol layer in our region and no validation on this either. This is indicated as the blue shaded area in the upper left plot below.
The only information on the height of this aerosol layer is from a height-cross section of the model at San Diego for this time. In the upper right of the image below the blue shaded area is the elevated smoke plume. As it reaches the continent it looks to be confined to the region between 650 to 400 mb or roughly 3.6 to 7.4 km above the ground level. The question is how much subsidence will bring it down to the surface and how high the concentrations are to start with. Based on the model the concentrations are low, so likely not going to be noticeable.

Still no high wind events in the near future.  On Monday a backdoor cold front is forecasted to mover over the area but is expected to be weak.

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