Saturday, October 22, 2011

Oct. 22 - I've enjoyed the warmer than average temperatures this weekend. Below are summaries at the NMSU Coop station as of today.

   Yesterday           Today
High(F)  Normal     Low(F)  Normal
 84        76        47       43

The AQI forecast for Sunday is for moderate (AQI of 67) in Dona Ana county. As in past days, this morning's surface inversion limited mixing close to the ground causing elevated PM at the Anthony and Sunland Park stations.

An interesting low wind high feature showed up at the Sunland Park City Yard station this evening as PM concentration levels were high coupled with low winds of 1 m/s.  Hourly PM10 at 7 pm peaked at 377 µg/m3 with PM2.5 at 76 µg/m3. At this point it doesn't appear to be an exceedance but nevertheless they are some high hourly values. This doesn't surprise me as the low wind events show up in October and last throughout the cooler seasons. Below is a depiction of the wind flow patterns and surface temperature at 6 pm today according to the 5-km RTMA model generated for 00 UTC. The curvy lines are wind streamlines showing winds at the surface. According to the model analysis the winds were from the north in Sunland Park at this time while the 10-meter winds at the station were from the south to south-southwest. The discrepancy shows the need for a detailed mesoscale model analysis beyond what is generated routinely from NOAA for general weather forecasting.

No comments:

Post a Comment