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Blowing dust across Texas

By Scott Bachmeier •

GOES-16 Red Visible (0.64 µm) images with plots of Surface Wind barbs (white), Peak Wind gusts (yellow) and Ceiling/Visibility/Weather (cyan); Interstate highways are plotted in red [click to play MP4 animation]

W-NW winds gusting in excess of 50 mph in the wake of a cold front lofted areas of blowing dust across parts of Texas on 12 March 2025, as seen in GOES-16 (GOES-East) Visible images (above). Blowing dust reduced the visibility to 1-1/2 miles at times along the Interstate 20 corridor in the vicinity of Midland.

Daytime True Color RGB images created using Geo2Grid (below) provided a more distinct view of the blowing dust — and after sunset, Dust RGB images highlighted the airborne dust as shades of magenta.

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

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