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Blowing dust across parts of Mexico, New Mexico and Texas — as viewed by 4 GOES

By Scott Bachmeier •

From left to right: GOES-18, GOES-17, GOES-19 and GOES-16 Dust RGB images, from 1900 UTC on 11th February to 0300 UTC on 12th February [click to play animated GIF]

10-minute Full Disk scan Dust RGB images from GOES-18 (GOES-West), GOES-17, GOES-19 (Preliminary/Non-operational) and GOES-16 (GOES-East) created using Geo2Grid (above) showed vivid signatures of blowing dust (brighter shades of magenta) that originated over parts of northern Mexico and southwestern New Mexico — and was subsequently transported northeastward across southern New Mexico and southwestern Texas on 11th February 2025.

5-minute CONUS Sector GOES-16 daytime True Color and Nighttime Microphysics RGB images from the CSPP GeoSphere site (below) highlighted the hazy tan-colored appearance of the blowing dust before sunset, followed by brighter shades of magenta at night (the Nighttime Microphysics RGB makes use of the 10.3-3.9 µm “split window difference”, which effective for dust detection).

GOES-16 daytime True Color RGB and Nighttime Microphysics RGB images, from 1901 UTC on 11th February to 0236 UTC on 12th February [click to play MP4 animation]

A GOES-16 Visible image (below) depicted the strong winds that were creating the blowing dust — which at that time was restricting the surface visibility to 1/2 mile at El Paso, Texas (KELP).

GOES-16 Red Visible (0.64 µm) image with plots of Surface Wind barbs (white), Peak Wind gusts (cyan/yellow) and Ceiling/visibility/Weather (green) at 2301 UTC on 11th February [click to enlarge]

Categories: Air quality, Geo2Grid, GOES-16, GOES-17, GOES-18, GOES-19, Red-Green-Blue (RGB) images