April 3, 2009
Smoke over Gulf of Mexico persists; Blowing dust in the West; Ozone increasing in Texas, Oklahoma and California
Today US enjoyed good air quality (top, left) in most of the country with some moderate levels of PM2.5 in California. Ozone levels are starting to increase, as expected, and California, Oklahoma and Florida showed some peaks of moderate levels in the late afternoon. Texas even reached code orange for ozone (top, right). Tomorrow's forecast is of moderate levels to Indiana, Texas, Arizona and California.
AirNow shows a code orange forecast for PM10 in Arizona (Phoenix and Pinal County) which might be the indication of blowing dust/sand over that region as discussed in the CIMSS Satellite Blog today. In the Navy Aerosol Analysis and Prediction System (NAAPS) Global Aerosol Model image for today we also can see the dust (bottom).
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In this same image we can see the high concentration of particles from the fires in Central America (also showed by NOAA SSD fire team bellow on bottom left) which, as discussed yesterday by Meloe, is being transported to Texas and Southeast US as we can also see in today's Terra MODIS image (bottom, right). Smoke from Oklahoma and Kansas were reported but were not visible in MODIS image.
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