U.S. Air Quality

Frontal system clears haze out of mid-Atlantic; Dusty in Las Vegas; Ozone in Riverside

Air quality across the country continues to be affected by smoke from the Las Conchas fire in New Mexico. Burning through 170 square miles of forest around Los Alamos, the town is now safe from burning and the residents are finally being allowed to return home. Mike Fromm sent out an assessment of high altitude smoke on June 30 which was over Nebraska at altitudes of 8-12 kilometers (images courtesy of Mike Fromm, NRL):

The NOAA GASP product has a 48 hour verification panel animation which shows this event clearly and gives a flavor of where that smoke went (although the AOD gets lost in the clouds that moved through with the frontal systems). The smoke clearly was the cause of yesterday's Unhealthy PM readings in Bloomington, Indiana.

Hysplit forward trajectories from those plumes show the smoke should now be in the US east and moving to the southeast (8 km trajectory red; green is 10km and blue is 13km). Smoke was forecast to follow the front that moved through Maryland yesterday and this morning we had elevated haze (see Patricia's post yesterday) in Maryland. The right image shows the RGB image from Aqua today with superimposed PM2.5 measurements and local fires and there was an orange Unhealthy for Sensitive Groups reading in Huntsville, AL today at the end of the red trajectories.

In the west, Las Vegas has 160 AQI on PM2.5. While the forecast says that this is submicron aerosol, it is unclear if it is pollution or dust. The forecast says wind gusts to 25 knots and blowing dust. The images below are from AIRNOW for the Las Vegas PM reading, from NASA Aqua Modis for the RGB and from NOAA for the Cig/Vis overlay showing 9-10 mile visible range. Below those images are two weatherbug webcams from Nevada(Batterman Elementary School in Las Vegas left and from Henderson NV on the right). On the lower right image, Unhealthy readings for Ozone are seen in the Riverside California area but there are orange readings throughout the southland.

2011_07_03_LV.jpg

Posted by Ray Hoff at July 3, 2011 7:51 PM