NM Border Air Quality Blog

Nov. 9 - Missed another day posting to the blog due to a lingering head cold. It's not that bad but it's slowing me down a bit but on the mend. On the topic of weather, we're transitioning out of the trough and under a upper level ridge to warm things up a little. Today's low temperature at NMSU was 33 and 32 at the airport. The long term average low at NMSU is 38 for today. Our low temperatures have been below normal for the past few months. In fact southwest NM has been running below the long term average low and parts of Dona Ana county are in the range of 3 degrees below the average over the past two months.

 

The CPC weekly forecast that came out today is also showing a below normal temperatures next week.

 

The seasonal picture is different and likely show above averge temperatures for this winter. The CPC notice this week (Nov. 6) said "La Niña conditions are expected to gradually strengthen and continue through the Northern Hemisphere winter 2011-12."

For today, I would normally expect a low wind event coming up but looking the winds in southern Dona Ana county, it doesn't fit the pattern. Winds at SPCY and Desert View are in the range of 4 m/s and too high for these low wind events.

Tomorrow's AQI forecast is indicating an area of moderate air quality over Dona Ana county on Thursday. They are attributing it to ozone. Another area of moderate also shows up in the Four Corners region.

 

We'll start our annual equipment inventory on Thursday. I hope the bar code scanner is available since a few a few of the bar codes are out in the field in Lordsburg, Columbus and Vado.

Thursday we are also doing "the Managing Drought in the southern Plains" webinar, This one is focused on water resources. I don't have an update to give but it the webinar should be good.