Nov. 10 - Haboob moved through northeastern New Mexico today along with a cold airmass

The animated sequence of satellite images below shows the path of the dust coming out of southeast Colorado and entering Union County, NM.

Visibility at the Clayton airport dipped to 4 miles at 6:55pm due to the dust while the winds were blowing 33 mph from the north with gusts to 44 mph. Dramatic changes in temperature also were observed in that area. At Clayton the temperature at 2:55pm was 77F and by 6:55pm it was at the freezing point, for a drop of 45F over a 4 hour period.

April 30 - Dust storm Irina brings in haze to the border area today

Yesterday high winds lofted dust from the Texas Panhandle as seen from satellite. Below is an image from the VIIRS SPoRT dust product. The pink area clearly identifies the dust that was generated from the storm.

Winds overnight transported some of this dust from the Panhandle to much of New Mexico and the border region. This morning's dust over Las Cruces was transported across west Texas and up toward the Panhandle overnight as the Hysplit plot below shows.

At 8am this morning haze has blanketed Las Cruces and remains in the air through the afternoon. The photo below is looking east toward the Organ Mountains from Las Cruces.

I expect the dust to linger even with a modest wind today.  The plot below shows Hysplit backtrajectories from various locations in the NM and AZ for 3pm this afternoon will continue to bring in haze.

 

As of noon a dust source in Chihuahua that looks to be east of the NM Bootheel is emitting dust. Winds are transporting it in a west northwest direction. Below is a GOES sounder longwave difference image at 12:02pm with the dust showing up in deep red and purple.

By 1pm the Mexican/Bootheel dust plume traveled into Arizona's Chiricahua Mountains and probably impacting I-10. Below is the VIIRS dust product from SPoRT at 1:41pm MDT.

As of 3pm the haze lingers in southern NM but cleared up slightly probably due to daytime mixing and deeper mixed layer. Below is a shot from San Augustine Pass at 2:30pm looking toward the Sacramento Mountains and Tularosa Basin to the east.

April 28 - Dust storm 'Helen' event summary

A particularly deep upper level trough has caused a couple of exceptional dust events to the border region this past weekend.

Below is a longwave difference animation that I recorded from the RAMSDIS webpage that shows the dust this morning looping around the low. Areas of dust show up as the deep red to violet.

The dust source area also shows up on the VIIRS dust product from SPoRT.  This was image was captured at 3pm mountain time.