NM Border Air Quality Blog

March 4 - The minimum temperature at NMSU was 40F and a maximum of 77F. The Las Cruces airport reached 70F today and Deming hit 71F. It was a breezy afternoon and the afternoon sky looked like it had dust from the west of us. It was kind of mikly white looking west from El Paso in the early afternoon. I was in Sunland Park and around La Union most of the afternoon but saw very little dust. Most of it was from unpaved roads and some tilling of fields. It looked like there was some land disturbance around the Sunland Park City Yard (SPCY) station today. I drove by it around 2 pm and there was some heavy equipment parked near it and this picture was taken showing dust near the site (see the center, in the distance) during wind gusts. I was on Racetrack Road looking south toward the SPCY station.

Tonight the 12-km 18Z NAM run is showing a brief wind event across the eastern part of our region. Below is the forecast for northerly winds 11 pm on Friday night.

The 18Z run of the GFS is consistently showing a high wind event on Monday afternoon. The map below shows the model at 5 pm on Monday afternoon. As in the forecast from yesterday, the highest winds are still in the Bootheel and in northwest Chihuahua. The 12-km NAM model for this same period is more optimistic with winds more than 30 mph for the afternoon.

 

The forecast for Tuesday shows again more winds. The 18Z GFS is predicting highest winds across the region. The map below is for winds at 11 am.

 

10 pm Evening Update

We had the brief northerly winds in the evening as predicted. The weather map below is from 04:43 UTC (9:43 pm) and shows the strong northerly winds. The El Paso airport station indicates blowing dust.

 

A few of the permanent NMED stations were affected by the brief wind event. Particulates at the Anthony station started at 8 pm.

 

Once again ozone at the NMED Hurley station showed peak hourly concentrations more than 70 ppb. Below is a plot of hourly ozone since Tuesday.

Looking at the forecasts, the 00Z GFS run is now showing the winds a little earlier in the day on Monday. The model is indicating peak winds around 18 UTC (11 am).