NM Border Air Quality Blog

June 5 -

Smoke impacts from the Whitewater-Baldy fire on the border region are minimal today.  The forecast for smoke is similar to yesterday with localized impacts near the fire with transport due to downslope and downvalley winds.  Winds are expected to be from the southwest to transport winds toward the northeast.  Yesterday afternoon, smoke was visible mainly near the fire. Below shows a MODIS image from the Aqua satellite. Red dots show the location of the active burning areas yesterday.

As of 10 am today hourly PM2.5 was low in Las Cruces, averaging less than 10 µg/m3. Yesterday the concentrations spiked up to 33 µg/m3 before the winds transported some of the haze out the valley. Below shows PM2.5 concentrations measured at the NMSU Fabian Garcia farm from yesterday to 10 am today.

Today's AQI forecast for the region shows an area of moderate over the Paso del Norte and El Paso county. This is due to ozone.