Thursday, June 16, 2011

June 16

Air Quality Alert for Thursday. This includes southwest New Mexico near the Wallow and Horseshoe2 Fires.

Due to the continuing 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 Thursday. We might see less smoke in the eastern parts of the study area but if the fire remains active, areas close to the burning will be impacted more.

Afternoon winds look to be an issue this afternoon for fire danger as well as for some blowing dust in areas with highly erodible soils. Below are RUC forecasted winds at 6 pm.

There was a little haze this morning in Las Cruces. I smelled smoke and saw some elevated smoke layers. The photo below was snapped at 8:37am looking at the Organ Mountains.
Hysplit predictions from the Horseshoe2 fire show the west-southwest flow carrying the smoke across Hidalgo, southern Grant and Luna counties today. Trajectory colors are 500 (green), 1500 (blue), and 4000 (red) meters above the ground. The trajectories start at 15 UTC (9 am MDT) and are shown every 3 hours till tomorrow morning at 6 am. Fire locations are from the NOAA HMS product at 10:30 am today.The map below shows a view looking down on the Horseshoe2 Fire toward the east.

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