NASA Images Reveal Texan Conditions Not Seen Since 1936

Amid exceptional drought, the city of El Paso, Texas, is facing dusty conditions not seen in nearly 90 years.

NASA has released an image of the latest dust storm captured by the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on the space agency's Aqua satellite, on April 27.

#dust #Texas #drought #DustStorm

https://www.newsweek.com/nasa-images-reveal-texan-conditions-not-seen-since-1936-2066648

20 sites. 18 days. 1 bingeable YouTube playlist.

Join Middlebury-based Cluster member Jeff Munroe on the 2024 Collectors Tour.

https://bit.ly/CollectorsTourPlaylist

Cluster scientist spotlight!

Julianne Liu DustKids Outreach Coordinator, Salt Lake Community College

What do you do day-to-day in your work?

"Most of the time, I’m in the classroom to facilitate DustKids lessons. I occasionally go into the field to collect samples for us to use in our activities."

More about #Dust Kids: https://bit.ly/4iEEY5r

Complete collection of scientist spotlights: https://bit.ly/4huMS0U

Where did yesterday's dust storm end up?

This weather satellite image at sunrise today shows a brownish plume that extends up to parts of Nebraska, Iowa, etc. (I surrounded the dusty plume with green dots.)

This is a follow up to:
https://universeodon.com/@KrajciTom/114413002689880165

Yet another dust storm over the southeast half of New Mexico, far west Texas, the Texas panhandle, Oklahoma panhandle, extending into Colorado and Kansas.

The dust is coming from prehistoric lake beds in northern Chihuahua, Mexico:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lake_Palomas

"Presently its basin is a major source of airborne dust in the region."

With the severe drought conditions in this region, it takes far weaker winds to create these dust storms compared to previous decades. Visibility at my house is less than 1/2 mile.

Note that the dust is tan, but that the gypsum dust from White Sands is paler. A fire is burning in northeast Sonora, Mexico...the smoke plume is bluish. A fire develops in central New Mexico (Rio Grande valley, town of Socorro) at the end of the animation loop. https://app.watchduty.org/i/47153

It was a dynamic weather day in New Mexico.

This weather satellite loop shows us a variety of activity:

- overall west-to-east flow of dry air in the western half of New Mexico. This dry air is not very dusty, at least not initially.

- moist air over the eastern half, which tends to be hazier. This haziness is seen best near the end of the loop when the sun angle gets low.

- strong thunderstorms developing along the dry line

- outflows and gust fronts from the storms raising dust and pushing it east against the flow of the dry air

- strong breezes in northeast Sonora, Mexico boost fire activity. The bluish smoke plume becomes visible near the end of the loop. The strong breezes also pick up dust at the end of the loop...colored tan/brown

- the moist air can't push further west because the terrain gets higher.

This is a follow up to an earlier post/toot about the Dry Line weather system:
https://universeodon.com/@KrajciTom/114406001338553756

A dust storm is kicked up by low-level outflow that races ahead of a cold front in southern New Mexico...reaching deep into west Texas and crossing all of southeast New Mexico by sunset.

This is an animation loop from visible light weather satellite images, overlayed with county boundaries and highways.

This is a follow up to:
https://universeodon.com/@KrajciTom/114366800523414859

A localized dust storm is kicked up by low-level outflow that races ahead of a cold front in southern New Mexico.

This is an animation loop from visible light weather satellite images, overlayed with composite radar, 500mb isobars and wind barbs, and county boundaries and highways.

The screengrab is annotated to show the direction of motion and the low-level outflow boundary that kicks up lots of desert dust. (This screengrab is taken from one of the later frames in the animation loop.)

You probably have to watch the loop more than once to see the subtle initial appearance of the low-level outflow boundary and dust...that becomes all too obvious by the end of the animation loop.

[Edit/add: METAR history (final screengrab) for Alamogordo showing how visibility went to hell as the outflow and dust storm moved into the area.

https://metar-taf.com/history/Kalm ]

this shit again #dust #weather #NewMexico #NMwx

Dust storm over the Persian Gulf on Sentinel-3 h/t Kosmi on Bsky
#climatemergency #iraq #duststorm #dust

Middlebury-based Cluster member @jmunroe quoted in today's medis coverage of findings from our source-to-sink study of #dust in the #CriticalZone.

“The samples that we collected, the analyses we did, reinforced the idea that the urban dust there in Salt Lake, in Provo, is different from natural dust. It has components in it, which do have sources in an urban landscape, the things we would expect to find in a place where there is a lot of development."

https://bit.ly/4cgYvah

NASA Earth Surface Mineral Dust Source Investigation (EMIT) Remote Sensing And Mapping
--
https://earth.jpl.nasa.gov/emit/ <-- shared NASA EMIT home page
--
https://phys.org/news/2023-12-nasa-emit-instrument-global-airborne.html <-- shared technical article
--
https://youtu.be/z9RjGdfxSDk?si=vMU9UAtAUcnvetwm <-- shared overview video
--
#GIS #spatial #mapping #fedscience #remotesensing #earthobservation #mineral #rockdust #source #investigation #calcite #chlorite #transport #dust #suspended #atmosphere #affects #effects #heating #cooling #albedo #spatialanalysis #spatiotemporal #nutrient #loess #publichealth #model #modeling #mineraldust
@nasa

Dust storm in southern New Mexico. Not an April Fools joke.

Many highways closed due to zero visibility.

https://weather.cod.edu/satrad/?parms=subregional-Desert_SW-truecolor-48-0-100-1&checked=map&colorbar=undefined

https://www.nmroads.com/default.html?

How much food is wasted around the world? https://www.diningandcooking.com/1990350/how-much-food-is-wasted-around-the-world/ #(Field #(Industry) #agriculture #CerealPlant #ColorImage #CornCrop #cracked #crop #CultivatedLand #drought #Dust #food #FoodAndDrinkIndustry #heat #land #LandFeature #LowAngleView #monoculture #NaturalDisaster #NaturalLandState #nobody #photography #sunlight #VibrantColor #vignette #WideAngleLens

Surprisingly comfortable, plus didn't cause glasses to fog up. #selfie #filter #mask #filtration #3M #dust

@DeniseG

Droughts are increasing. Global warning dries out continents, increases coastal formed storms. Canada's forests burning, farms failing, dust storms growing.

Map of U.S. droughts

https://www.drought.gov/data-maps-tools/us-drought-monitor

The snow falling in Lincoln, Nebraska is very dirty. It contains dust from New Mexico and Texas that has blown all the way up here.
#dust #NewMexico #Texas #snow #Nebraska #weather #NEwx

Last night's dust storm over New Mexico continued to rage through the night, and sunrise shows it has reached Louisiana, Arkansas, and other states to the north of them. (See screenshot - dust storm is highlighted with red dots.)

This is a follow up to yesterday's toot/post: https://universeodon.com/@KrajciTom/114187160615114653