Strong winds in the wake of a cold front lofted areas of blowing dust across parts of southern New Mexico, southwestern Texas and northern Mexico on 19 April 2025, as seen in GOES-19 (GOES-East) Visible images (above). The peak wind gust at El Paso, Texas (KELP) was 50 kts (58 mph), and blowing dust reduced the visibility to 1/4 mile at Carlsbad, New Mexico (KCNM). GOES-19 Derived Motion Winds indicated that the leading edge of the blowing dust was moving at speeds up to 35 kts across northern Mexico.

Several Blowing Dust Warnings were issued by the NWS Forecast Offices in El Paso and Midland (below), which at times covered parts of Interstates 10 and 20 in New Mexico and Texas.

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. Ahead of the cold front, several wildfires across northern Mexico were producing notable smoke plumes.

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1-minute Mesoscale Domain Sector GOES-19 (GOES-East) “Red” Visible (0.64 µm) images (above) showed 2 supercell thunderstorms that produced numerous tornadoes, hail to 4.00″ in diameter and wind gusts to 86 mph (SPC Storm Reports) across parts of eastern Nebraska and western Iowa on 17 April 2025. Pulses of overshooting tops and Above-Anvil Cirrus Plumes were apparent with these thunderstorms.

In the corresponding 1-minute GOES-19 “Clean” Infrared Window (10.3 µm) images (below), the coldest cloud-top infrared brightness temperatures associated with some of the pulsing overshooting tops were in the -75 to -78ºC range.

In a toggle between GOES-19 Visible and Infrared images at 2322 UTC (below), there was a pronounced “warm trench” immediately downwind (east) of the cold overshooting top associated with the northernmost supercell thunderstorm. Hail of 2.75″ in diameter and a wind gust of 82 mph were reported near the overshooting top/warm trench around the time of these two GOES-19 images (note: the SPC Storm Reports are plotted at their surface location, and are not corrected for storm-top parallax).

The 2322 UTC GOES-19 Infrared image with labels of cloud-top infrared brightness temperatures of the cold overshooting top (-74.1 ºC) and adjacent downwind warm trench (-51.1 ºC) is shown below.

According to a plot of 2000 UTC rawinsonde data from Omaha, Nebraska (below), the coldest cloud-top infrared brightness temperatures of -78ºC represented a ~2 km overshoot of the Most Unstable air parcel Equilibrium Level (MU EL).

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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).

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True-color imagery over Lakes Erie/Ontario shows a white patch backed into extreme eastern Lake Erie, and also in Lake Ontario at the mouth of the Niagara River. White patches also exist over inland portions of New York, between Fredonia and Houghton. Are these white regions clouds or snow? Visible imagery, (I01 imagery at 0.64 µm) shown below in a toggle with near-infrared imagery at 1.61 (I03 VIIRS data), shows highly reflective regions in the visible that are absorbing (rather than reflecting) energy at 1.61 µm. The snow over western New York between Fredonia and Houghton is dark in the I03 imagery — and the reflective signal over Lakes Erie and Ontario south of Buffalo and at the mouth of the Niagara River is much diminished or missing altogether. This is likely ice, or snow on top of ice.

VIIRS False-Color imagery (in reality, the Day Land Cloud RGB), shows the cyan color expected with ice features in that small corner of Lake Erie, over the remnant snow over western New York and also in the outflow from the Niagara River.

A screengrab from the webcam at Fort Niagara on Lake Ontario (here) shows the near-shore ice (revealed by the webcam to be drifting to the east).

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True Color imagery from the 1755 UTC overpass over all the Great Lakes, below, shows that ice is confined to the small patch over eastern Lake Erie, over parts of the North Channel of Lake Huron, extreme eastern Lake Superior where that lake drains into the St Mary’s River, and some of the bays along the western Lake Superior shore, such as Black Bay.

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One of the reasons ice is flowing down the Niagara River: The Buffalo Ice Boom has been removed (press release). A screen capture from a Buffalo webcam showing the Niagara River is below, and I thank Michael Fries, MIC at WFO BUF for this information.

Thanks to Rick DiMaio for initially alerting us to this feature.

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