Blowing dust in northeastern Arizona
GOES-13 visible images
GOES-13 visible channel images (above) showed widespread blowing dust across much of northeastern Arizona on 03 April 2009. Surface winds in that region gusted to 91 mph at Meteor Crater and 68 mph at Winslow. Note that the thick pall of airborne dust also appeared to be having the effect of limiting the development of cumulus clouds across northeastern Arizona (by reducing the amount of solar radiation reaching the surface).
AWIPS images of the MODIS “visible” channel, 2.1 µm near-IR “Snow/ice” channel, 11.0 µm “IR window” channel, and the 1.3 µm near-IR “cirrus detection” channel (below) showed that the bowing dust feature exhibited a signature on all four of those MODIS spectral bands. The dust plume was drifting into far southwestern Colorado, where surface visibility dropped to 2 miles at Cortez.
MODIS "visible", "snow/ice", "IR window", and "cirrus detection" images