July 27 -

Scattered thunderstorms kept air quality in the good range today and will likely remain that way on Saturday. A few locations along the border received rain today

Animas     0.08"

Hachita    0.16"

Orogrande  Trace

Las Cruces Trace

While Saharan dust reached southeastern Texas, it appeared not to reach NM based on the NAAPS model predictions.

 

Wildfire smoke appeared well north of the state today.

July 25 -

Scattered thunderstorms kept air quality in the good range except for brief gusty conditions from thunderstorm outflows and downdrafts.

 

As of 4 pm there were reports of blowing dust from thunderstorms in Luna and Grant Counties.

July 24 -

The moisture plume fueling extends over our area so we should see isolated thunderstorms and hopefully precipitation over the border. I'm seeing precipitation from the El Paso radar already near the Bootheel region. We'll seen another good air quality day along the border with green AQI forecasted over all of NM.

 

A haboob rolled through the area this afternoon. I measured wind gusts of  32 mph on campus at 6:25 pm as I was leaving work. This was at the Skeen Hall parking lot at 1.5 m using the Kestrel. Blowing dust was seen all over campus as well. Thanks to Liz and Rebecca we're also coordinating a sampling effort this evening in El Paso and in southern Dona Ana County for fungal species. Below is a view from campus looking north this evening.

 

Below was today's webcam looking out toward the west from the NMSU campus. The haboob began at 5:30 pm

July 23-

Our monsoonal pattern will keep pollutants in the good range today as the AQI forecast below shows.

Intercontinental pollutant transport remains active as a large Saharan dust laden air mass remains just south of NM and smoke plumes are well north of us as the NAAPS model indicates.

 

As of late last week I will be maintaining two different blogs that will keep me busy. I will continue to run this one but will refocus this one towards reporting on air quality along the border. Occasionally I will report on some topic on climate or weather but that will lesson.  I started another blog for the NM Office of State Climatologist to report on topics, news, and issues of climate. There are many times when I wish that I could explain topics of climate further on this blog but it deviates from the original purpose of discussing air quality for the NM Department of Health effort.  You can read the other blog here, http://nmclimatecenter.blogspot.com/.

July 20 -

After some travel and vacation I'm back to blogging air quality along the border region. So far here in Las Cruces we received 0.77 inches of rain in July. That's about 48% of what we typically receive in the month of July. There's still 12 more days to go in the month although we're expecting a dry period over the next few days. The 5 day QPF shows most of the precipitation falling to the west of us and in the mountains over that period.

 Today's AQI forecast shows good air quality throughout the region.

 

A few isolated storms are providing some precipitation across the border along the bootheel this afternoon. Below is the radar reflectivity at 6:21 pm today. There are also reports of street flooding in El Paso this afternoon.

 

July 1 -

Wow, we are in July already.  From the NOAA HMS smoke product we might be seeing some of the transported smoke from a Mexican fire today.

By late afternoon the far western border region had some convective storms pop up. Areas north of us fared better with precipitation today but our turn may be coming.

Temperatures didn't get as high today as the past few days but the dewpoint is climbing up and we're in the mid 30s to 40 around the region. Low level Hysplit backtrajectories from points in NM are from the Gulf of Mexico.

Welcoming us to July, I saw a promising 4-5 day QPF map for rain after the 4th. This looks to be a promising monsoon pattern with some impressive amounts.

 

The El Paso NWS office has been updating a nice daily climate graphic for the airport. You can see the above normal temperatures this summer clearly in the graph. The green is the normal daily temperature variation, the red is the record highs, and the blue are the record lows.