NM Border Air Quality Blog

Jan. 1 -

Happy New Year everyone!

2012 starts off with a low wind, high PM event at the Sunland Park air quality stations. Both the SPCY and Desert View site saw high evening concentrations of PM2.5 although higher at the SPCY station.  The Airnow AQI forecast is showing green or good air quality throughout the border region on Sunday.

Below are this morning's observations at a couple NWS Cooperative weather stations.

                 Yesterday           Today

Station       High(F)  Normal     Low(F)  Normal  Record Low

NMSU            68        57        29      29     14 (1970)
Antelope Wells  74        61        31      29     18 (2010)

The winds picked up significantly after midnight at the SPCY station with peak hourly averaged wind speed of 10 m/s at 5 am.

 

This was a quiet night at the SPCY station with both PM10 and PM2.5 very low. PM2.5 was in the 1 µg/m3 range at 8 pm. While I was there around 5 pm, winds were out of the southeast.