NM Border Air Quality Blog

May 5

Good low level temperature inversion this morning at Santa Teresa. The 12 UTC skew-T chart from UCAR shows temperature in the red line.

I anticipate seeing northerly to northeasterly winds in the morning and turning around to the southeast in the afternoon as a cold front slides through our area. The front is just to the north of us at 6 am

By afternoon we should be seeing breezy southeast winds as the forecast map below shows at 3 pm.

According to the AQI forecast we're to see a similar pattern as yesterday with an area of moderate air quality across the Paso del Norte, Dona Ana, southern Sierra, and western Otero Counties.

 

As of this 3pm the EPA/NOAA ozone modeling shows a patch of 1-hr ozone concentrations in the 70 ppb range west of El Paso. The NMED Santa Teresa station was at 69 ppb at 1 pm today.

 

The Miller fire in the Gila Wilderness and in Mexico were active today. On my way to Tucson this evening, it was hazy west of Lordsburg. Looking at the NOAA HMS fire and smoke product this makes sense.. Southwest winds aloft today transported the smoke toward the northeast. The Miller fire reach 12,885 acres today according to InciWeb.