Saturday, May 28, 2011

May 28

Much like other days it was a windy, hot, and dry day. High temperatures ranged from 100F in El Paso, 99 in Orogrande, 97 in Hachita, and 95 in Deming.  The big story is the likelihood of some precipitation next week. In the mean time we will see high winds on Sunday and Monday. Winds on Sunday could be high enough to loft windblown dust in our region.

The AQI forecast showed an area of moderate air quality in the Paso del Norte and El Paso County.

We saw a little more impacts from the Arizona wildfires today than yesterday. Winds in the afternoon were from the west southwest and it was hazy in Las Cruces. Below is a visible image from GOES at 7 pm.
The NOAA HMS product verified this as smoke plumes were driven by the westerly winds over most of the study region.
The NOAA GASP AOD product clearly showed the smoke plumes from the Arizona and Mexican fires at 6:15 pm MDT today.
The current NWS forecast shows a slight chance of precipitation over our area late Tuesday and into Wednesday morning.  Below is a map from the 00Z GFS run of surface dewpoints at midnight on Tuesday night. 
It shows the sharp dewpoint boundary moving over the Rio Grande Valley coming from the east. This dew point boundary of dry line will be item to track in future forecasts as it controls whether we will see precipitation or not. It looks highly probable that eastern NM will receive precipitation but it's still up in air if it'll reach us.

The 00Z QPF was not as generous but that might change in tomorrow's 12Z product.

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