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Blowing dust across New Mexico and Texas

By Scott Bachmeier •

5-minute GOES-19 daytime True Color RGB + nighttime Dust RGB images, from 1801 UTC on 17 April to 0601 UTC on 18 April [click to play animated GIF | MP4]

5-minute CONUS Sector GOES-19 (GOES-East) daytime True Color RGB images created using Geo2Grid (above) provided a distinct view of widespread blowing dust that spread northeastward across much of New Mexico during the day on 17 April 2025 — eventually reaching the Texas/Oklahoma Panhandles (and even southeast Colorado and southwest Kansas). After sunset, Dust RGB images highlighted the airborne dust as brighter shades of magenta.

1-minute Mesoscale Domain Sector GOES-19 Visible images (below) included plots showing the strong winds which produced blowing dust. In southwestern New Mexico this blowing dust caused marked reductions in visibility, leading to the closure of several highways — including Interstate 10 near Deming KDMN (where a fatal vehicular accident occurred).

1-minute GOES-19 Red Visible (0.64 µm) images with plots of 30-minute Peak Wind gusts (yellow/red) and hourly Ceiling/Visibility/Weather (cyan) from 1931 UTC on 17 April to 0030 UTC on 18 April; Interstate highways are plotted in violet [click to play MP4 animation]

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