Saturday, April 2, 2011

April 2 - Dust alert for tomorrow

Today's winds are not an issue. Highest winds are in the area around Nuevo Casas Grandes in far northwestern Chihuahua. Below is the 15Z cycle of 20kmRUC forecast for this afternoon at 00 UTC (6 pm MDT).

Here are the forecasted highs for today. Let's see what records we can break. Las Cruces started off with a low of 48F.  The warmest low for this day is 55F back in 1969.

Forecast Actual                Old
High (F) High (F)  Location    Record and year
86       ??        Deming      88 in 1914
88       91        Las Cruces  87 in 2002
90       ??        El Paso     86 in 2002
90       92        Columbus    88 in 1959
88       ??        Lordsburg   88 in 2002

So far Columbus has broken their high temperature record by 2 degrees and Las Cruces by 3 degrees. We will likely break other records but I will update the others when I get the data.

Today's AQI forecast has an area of moderate air quality over Dona Ana, eastern Luna, and southern Sierra counties.
Today a few fires were active in NM but the biggest ones were in Mexico. The green shaded areas are smoke plumes. The big plume on the lower right is from a large wildfire in Mexico.
The wind outlook for Sunday afternoon from the 12Z GFS run still shows high winds over the whole region

Monday doesn't look as promising for dust. The forecast from Friday showed much higher winds but this morning's GFS and NAM says the opposite and the winds have moved to the east over Texas.

Sunday afternoon's winds are reflected in this evening's 03Z RUC forecast. Highest winds look to be localized north along the Luna and Dona Ana county borders and areas in SW Dona Ana county, and in the Bootheel mountains. Below is the 21 UTC (3 pm MDT) wind forecast. Winds should pick up in the late morning and peak in the afternoon. The NWS is indicating some of the highest winds near the eastern slopes of the Franklin and Organ Mountains including the Chaparral area with gusts to 70 mph.

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