Blowing dust from northern Mexico to the Southern Plains

By Scott Bachmeier • 29 March 2022

GOES-16 Dust RGB images [click to play animated GIF | MP4]

GOES-16 (GOES-East) Dust RGB images (above) highlighted the development of widespread blowing dust (brighter shades of pink/magenta) across northern Chihuahua, Mexico and parts of Texas, New Mexico and Oklahoma on 29 March 2022. Strong winds within the corridor between a dryline and an approaching cold front were gusting as high as 65 knots — and the lofted blowing dust was reducing the surface visibility to 1.5 miles at some locations. Much of that region had been experiencing severe to exceptional drought conditions.

GOES-16 True Color RGB images created using Geo2Grid (below) provided another view of the blowing dust plumes (shades of tan to light brown), as well as a few narrow plumes of smoke (dull shades of white) from wildfires that spread quickly due to the strong winds.

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

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GOES-16 “Red” Visible (0.64 µm) images, with time-matched SPC Storm Reports plotted in red [click to play animated GIF | MP4]

Farther to the north, severe thunderstorms developed ahead of the dryline across eastern Kansas — and overlapping 1-minute GOES-16 Mesoscale Sectors provided 30-second imagery of these storms; “Red” Visible (0.64 µm) images with plots of time-matched SPC Storm Reports are shown above, during the hours leading up to sunset.

After sunset, isolated tornadoes were reported in northeastern Kansas and northwestern Missouri, as seen in GOES-16 “Clean” Infrared (10.35 µm) images (below).

GOES-16 “Clean” Infrared Window (10.35 µm) images, with time-matched SPC Storm Reports plotted in blue [click to play animated GIF | MP4]

Categories: Air quality, Geo2Grid, GOES-16, Red-Green-Blue (RGB) images, Severe convection

CIMSS Satellite Blog

CIMSS Satellite Blog

Blowing dust from northern Mexico to the Southern Plains