Wednesday, May 23, 2012

May 23 -

Smoke impacted more toward the east side of the state last night and early this morning.  I've seen Twitter reports of bad smoke in Artesia.

The big stories today are the continued smoke in the Gila and high winds in our region for the potential for blowing dust.

The AQI forecast for today shows an area of Unhealthy for Sensitive Groups (orange) over the Paso del Norte due to PM10. I am assuming that it is due to wind blown dust.

Today's BlueSky smoke predictions for PM2.5 show the highest impacts directly east of the Gila fires. I've also run Hysplit starting at 11 am and going through the next 24-hours. Both 500 m and 3 km trajectories align and head toward the northeast today.
Here is a view of the fire from MODIS on the Terra spacecraft. Image background was obtained from the NASA Lance website. The image is a mosaic from the 17:30 and 19:00 UTC satellite passes.

I read that the Baldy fire has grown to 11, 500 acres in the Gila Mountains. The smoke plume is clearly seen on GOES imagery this afternoon and flowing in an easterly direction.  With the high winds today, we have several opportunities to see dust and smoke. Looking at the 23:32 UTC GOES image, I picked out locations of blowing dust.  The Gila wildfire plume is very dense and extends across New Mexico and into Texas.




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