Friday, January 20, 2012

Jan. 20 -

Breezy, clear skies and warm temperatures today. I am looking at a fairly breezy weekend along the border. Winds at the Las Cruces airport already have gusted to 40 mph at 2:55 pm. Dewpoint temperatures are low, so we have dry airmass and our RH are in the single digits.  Below are this morning's observations at a couple NWS Cooperative weather stations.

                 Yesterday            Today
Station       High(F) Normal    Low(F)  Normal  Record Low Precip
NMSU            72      59       34      28       10 (1963) 0.00"
Antelope Wells  73      61       31      27       12 (2008) 0.00"

It is warm but not enough for a record as the daily record for yesterday was 77 from back in 2000. So far we have 0.68 inches of precipitation under our belt for the month of January. Last year we had none.

The EPA AQI forecast is showing good air quality for the region today.
Not a lot of dust is being recorded at the NMED stations but definitely some particulate is being lofted by the winds. The SPCY station's hourly PM10 peaked at just over 100 µg/m3 this afternoon.

The NOAA Climate Prediction Center seasonal forecasts for temperature and precipitation just came out yesterday and they are looking like a typical La Nina pattern. Our area has the highest probability of a drier than average spring than the rest of the state. That couple spell for more dust again this spring. At least we share it with southern Arizona, if its any consolation. Below is the February through April precipitation forecast. The shaded colors indicate probabilities above and below the long term average.
Temperatures are also forecasted to be warmer than average.

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