NM Border Air Quality Blog

June 10 -

I got back from a weekend at Kingston, NM on the eastern edge of the Black Mountains today. There were no impacts of smoke from Friday to Sunday. I talked to folks living in the area and they said that they received minimal smoke from the Gila fire.  On the way there on Friday evening I saw a brief pyrocumulus cloud formation just before sunset from the Little Bear fire in the Sacramento Mountains. Below is a shot of the Little Bear plume around 7 pm on Friday as seen from the Upham exit on I-25. By the time I could pull over it was starting to dissipate but I captured part of it.

 

Stopping at Caballo Dam on Friday evening before heading west of highway 152, I snapped a photo of the Whitewater-Baldy smoke plume looking north. Most of the plume looked to be elevated but some appeared to be reaching the ground.

We could see some visibility impacts from the fires in the Sierra Madres of Mexico today. Based on the wind forecasts, I see no impacts of smoke from the Gila fire in our area. Below shows an afternoon image from GOES (courtesy of NCAR). The smoke plume from the Little Bear fire dominates over other fires today.

 

Today's backtrajectories from NOAA showed that smoke from the Mexican fires could impact our area today. The following map shows backtrajectories from Las Cruces, Silver City, Mayhill, and Ft. Davis, TX.