NM Border Air Quality Blog

Oct. 17 - A cold front is moving its way into eastern NM with strong winds and blowing dust. Looking at the Texas Tech webcams, all you can see is brown sky in the view, http://www.atmo.ttu.edu/webcams.html. The hourly PM2.5 concentration at 3 pm was showing 21.5 µg/m3. This should bring in cool air to our study region later in the day.

The AQI forecast for today shows an area of moderate air quality in southern New Mexico on around the Paso del Norte.

 

Last night I saw a moderate low wind episode at the southern NMED PM stations. The Sunland City Yard station recorded a peak PM10 concentration of 351 µg/m3 at 6 pm. PM2.5 was 61 µg/m3 at the time. We will probably expect to see more of them tomorrow morning as the ground cools and sets up a strong stable layer.

A haboob rushed through eastern NM in the afternoon bringing in low visibilities and thick dust. Below is a snapshot at 23UTC (5 pm) showing the dust cloud along an arc in the middle of the image. Vectors are from the 20-km RUC surface winds at 23 UTC.