Monday, June 13, 2011

June 13

Air Quality Alert for Monday. Please read the Air Quality Alert that includes SW New Mexico.

Due to smoke from the Horseshoe 2 Fire it is expected that the air quality in southwest New Mexico will continue to be in the unhealthy for sensitive groups range (orange AQI) on Monday. The map below indicates the areas under this alert.
Morning PM2.5 was lower than yesterday in Las Cruces. This is not a Federal Reference Monitor (FRM). This may change based on the wind forecast and the fire behavior today.
Hysplit trajectories from the Horseshoe2 Fire show many southwesterly winds aloft but westerly lower level winds
As of 10 am the Deming profiler is showing westerly winds from the surface to about 500m and southwesterly above that.
Filter samples of 24-hour PM2.5 have been collected since Friday at NMSU. The 47mm Teflon (PTFE) unexposed filters are white and the more loaded they are the darker they become. The sample from Sunday was the darkest so far.
Clouds over the border area today masked some of the smoke plume and was a little hard to track it from satellite as the image at 7 pm shows.
The outlook for Tuesday shows an area of air quality categorized as "unhealthy for sensitive groups" along the border from the El Paso to the Arizona state line.
As of 9 pm on Monday night, Las Cruces is covered in smoke. The Deming radar wind profiler is showing west northwest winds at the surface up to about 1 kilometer above the ground and westerly and west southwesterlies above that.

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