NM Border Air Quality Blog

Dec. 21 - Morning haze in Las Cruces and looking south. At 10 am the PM10 at the core site reads 108 µg/m3 and PM2.5 is 10 µg/m3. Not that high but the ratio leads me to think that this is mainly soil dust. Anthony PM10 is 89 and PM2.5 is 16 µg/m3. Winds are light but mainly from the south so the source is south of town. My first guess of the source of this is the pecan harvesting that's going on now in the valley.

As for the rest of today, winds are likely from the west southwest peaking around 4 to 5 m/s over the populated areas and a little higher in the bootheel. Here is the 22UTC (3 pm) wind forecast from the RUC2 model. Today the high was 71F on the campus of NMSU. The normal high is 57F so our high is 14 degrees above normal.

 

A fire detections from the NOAA HMS product in Chihuahua today. Not sure the extent of these.

 

Tropospheric NO2 from the OMI sensor on the Aura satellite shows a substantial plume center around El Paso. It is also interesting to see NO2 enhanced along the I-35 and I-10 in Texas and along the Gulf.

 

We also have another low wind, high PM event going on in southern Dona Ana County. Below are plots from the NMED AQB webpage for PM2.5 and PM10 at the Sunland Park City Yard site.