Wednesday, June 15, 2011

June 15

Air Quality Alert for Wednesday. 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 far southwest New Mexico will continue to be in the unhealthy/very unhealthy/hazardous range on Wednesday. 
 
Particulate concentrations collected in Las Cruces yesterday and this morning are much lower than yesterday. The graph below shows PM2.5 from the past 24-hours.



Winds from the Deming profiler shows northwesterly winds with a change in direction from the northeast between 9 and 10 am this morning. Winds aloft remain westerly.



Today's wind pattern forecast shows southwest winds in the Bootheel and northwest in the lowlands above I-10. Below is the RUC foreacst for 6 pm today.



I'm looking at the next four days (Thu-Fri-Sat-Sun) for wind to affect fire activity and wind blown dust along the border. Below is the 12Z run of the 80-km GFS surface wind forecast at Lordsburg.



 Smoke started to settle in Las Cruces around 7 pm tonight. I snapped this photo at 8:39pm.
At 7pm GOES shows the smoke plume drifting east northeast with significant horizontal dispersion. The green vectors are from the 00Z NAM run at 700mb and the blue shows KEPZ reflectivity. A significant amount of smoke came in from the Monument Fire along the Arizona/Mexico border south of the Horseshoe2 plume.
The moon rise over the Organ Mtns tonight was impressive.


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