NM Border Air Quality Blog

May 21

Another breezy afternoon with highs in the low 80s across the region. A weak cold front passed over us this morning as the upper level trough over the midwest migrates east.

We had westerly and southwest winds most of the day. The RUC forecasts showed highest winds across northern Luna and southeast Grant county.

The westerly winds transported smoke from the Horseshoe 2 Fire toward Las Cruces but it seemed that most of the smoke was aloft and not that much reached the surface. The Santa Teresa sounding at 6 pm showed an inversion at 650 mb that probably kept smoke higher in the atmosphere. By this evening I saw smoke across the horizon and above Las Cruces but visibility was pretty good. Below is the NOAA HMS product at 10 pm.

 

The 5 day precipitation outlook is again dry.

 

The NMED Hurley 1-hour ozone concentration peaked at 75 ppb at 4pm with the 8-hour concentration was 72 ppb as of 9 pm. It is interesting since the Deming 1-hr max was 57 ppb at 2 pm. The NOAA/EPA ozone modeling doesn't capture this. Below are the 1-hour ozone concentrations at 4 pm from the NOAA EMC webpage. The concentration at Hurley was about 60 ppb in this model run.

 

The forecast for smoke on Sunday shows a possibility for some lingering smoke to drift into Dona Ana county in the morning. The map below is NOAA's surface smoke forecast for 9 am Sunday and isolated impacts of smoke.

Monday looks to be windy but still not convinced of a windspread dust event but it looks more like a day with isolated dust.