May 18 -
We've been seeing the effects of several wildfires on our area. Last night's Naval Aerosols model run showed the complexity of the pollutant airmasses over our area. The map on the lower left shows the surface smoke concentrations from their model for 5 pm last night.
The impacts to our area are small and take a little work to find them but they are there. Earlier this week we saw long range transport from Asian fires that stayed high in the troposphere and didn't reach the ground. I did a Hysplit run at 10 km and sort of matched the smoke plume pattern. Later this week we are starting to see more continental wildfire smoke both from south of us and from the region. Albuquerque has been expecting more from the regional fires in central Arizona and less here along the border. The City of Albuquerque has been sending out notices to this effect. Compared to last year, we are seeing less fire activity up to this point. Last year we were seeing fires such as the Miller fire in the Gila and the Horseshoe II fire in SE Arizona.
The NOAA HMS smoke plume product by the end of the day shows the extent of the smoke across the US but little over the border region. A small plume reaches across the Gila and smoke sits across much of eastern NM.
The AQI forecast shows good air quality over the border region today.
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