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Blowing dust in Texas

By Scott Bachmeier •

GOES-16 Dust RGB and Split Cloud Top Phase (11.2-8.4 µm) images [click to play animation | MP4]

GOES-16 Dust RGB and Split Cloud Top Phase (11.2-8.4 µm) images [click to play animation | MP4]

GOES-16 (GOES-East) Dust RGB and Split Cloud Top Phase (11.2-8.4 µm) images (above) showed signatures of blowing dust — brighter shades of magenta/pink on the Dust RGB and darker shades of blue on the Split Cloud Top Phase images — moving southward across southwestern Texas on 05 March 2021. Winds were not particularly strong on this day (with peak gusts only in the 30-40 knot range), so the dust signatures were not as vivid as was seen in similar recent events such as 15 Jan 2021 and 30 Jan 2021. The blowing dust did restrict surface visibility to 2.5 miles at Midland, Texas (KMAF).

GOES-16 True Color RGB images created using Geo2Grid (below) did not reveal a distinct blowing dust signature until later in the day, when a more favorable forward scattering geometry helped to highlight the feature.

GOES-16 True Color RGB images [click to play animation | MP4]

GOES-16 True Color RGB images [click to play animation | MP4]

Categories: Air quality, GOES-16, Red-Green-Blue (RGB) images