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It seems like yesterday's big dust storm that originated in Nebraska and Colorado (see my previous post) has now traveled a huge distance. The affected states include Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama.
I would risk to say (with no evidence at this moment except by a common sense guess) that the storm came into Texas during the afternoon of the 18 of Oct. 2012. And traveled through Louisiana today early in the morning, and, this picture is captured a little before noon local time. The image shown here is produced by our "beta" Near-Real-Time (NRT) dust aerosol detection system. And is produced using NASA Terra-MODIS multispectral data.
As the dust is traveling through central and south-eastern US, it seems to be weaker and weaker. I would forecast that the dust would end up near the East coast of the US, but very weak.
I promise a complete followup on Sunday night.
--------------------UPDATE------------------
I was right! It moved to the East coast. Check the following video...
Today our system shows high probabilities of dust aerosols present in the states of Nebraska, Colorado, Kansas, and Oklahoma. It seems like a strong winds originated from the Dakotas to Oklahoma and possibly cold fronts provoked a dust storm of a large size. The area monitored by NASA-Terra-MODIS suggests that the dust storm size could cover the state of Oklahoma almost in its entirety.
A report from Tulsa, OK, says that the visibility in one of their highways was of about 10 feet, near black out.
"A massive dust storm swirling reddish-brown clouds over northern Oklahoma triggered a multi-vehicle accident along a major interstate Thursday, forcing police to shut down the heavily traveled roadway amid near blackout conditions. (Oct. 18)" - Associated Press. Here is a video from a helicopter (I guess).
Another official source says the following:
"Strong winds in the Plains today have caused travel disruptions from the Dakotas to Oklahoma. This picture shows several trucks blown over on Interstate 90 near Belvidere, SD. This is just one of several reports of traffic accidents in the region caused by strong winds and/or blowing dust." - U.S. National Weather Service.
Our Near-Real-Time (NRT) Dust Aerosol Detection System (DADS) for the date can be accessed here: NRT DADS. In this site you can download the data granules corresponding to this dust storm, which are 16:55 (UTC) and 18:35 (UTC), both corresponding to multispectral data processed from the NASA Terra-MODIS instrument.
More information (local news) for Oklahoma can be found here and here.
Also for other reports about Kansas can be found here.
From our NRT-DADS system we produced the following images:
On the left is the true color image of the dust storm. On the right the detected probability of dust aerosols. The darker the less probable, the lighter the more probable.
This is the full-size image granule from MODIS 16:55 UTC.
This is the full-size dust aerosol detection system's output.
This is the true color detection with a color coded area where the dust aerosol probability is higher.
Today I had the privilege of being asked by a "Dust-Storm" expert the following:
"There is massive amounts of dust today in New Mexico and El Paso. But
on the satellite I can't easily tell which is dust and which is cloud.
Can you run your algorithm today and see if it differentiates them?" - Dr. Thomas Gill
Unfortunately, the algorithm was "trained" or "taught" to discriminate clouds, that is, wherever there is a cloud, don't bother searching for dust. The original premise by some NASA experts and I was that, since my algorithm uses thermal spectral bands near the infra-red spectrum, any cloud would significantly deteriorate the thermal emission of the dust aerosols; in other words: it would mess up the whole algorithm. So anyway, what I am trying to say is that all clouds are "mapped" to black (non-dusty) aerosols.
Below are the results of my algorithm. On the left we have true color images and on the right we have the output of my algorithm; on the first row is shown MODIS-Terra and on the second MODIS-Aqua, 17:35 UTC and 2050 UTC, respectively.
This dust storm was classified as "severe" and it is probably the worst in the last five years. Here is the full overpass of MODIS-Terra and my algorithm's output...
This is the GOES East animation of the event; as you can see, there is a large number of clouds moving over the area of the incident, making almost impossible to analyze using traditional infra-red imagery.
Finally, here are some pictures of friends and videos uploaded by other people.
This is data of the dust storm event of January 22nd, 2012.
Location: North-West Texas.
Time: Between 05:00 1/22 and 15:00 1/23 UTC
Blowing dust developed in New Mexico, Texas, and Oklahoma on 22 January 2012. Winds of 60-70 mph gusted Texas, and reduced visibility to 0.5 miles. A large number of individual blowing dust plumes converged into a single large blowing dust cloud. The primary large dust plume moved to the northeast Oklahoma, meanwhile, smaller dust plumes moved southeast Oklahoma and Texas panhandle regions behind a secondary cold front.
Dust Plumes at Chihuahuan Desert and East-Lubbock/East-Midland Nov 6, 2011
As predicted by some folks, dust arrived to El Paso, TX. This was mainly over the Chihuahuan desert with winds and dust moving from south-west to north-east.
Also, some dust plumes could be observed on the east region of Lubbock, TX, and east Midland, TX, with winds and dust blowing from south to north.
Here is the true color NASA MODIS - Terra image:
Here is the output of my algorithm for dust aerosols detection:
If we use the GOES information, we can barely see any activity on the infra-red data. This is GOES East:
This is GOES West:
Have any comments or other pictures, please let me know.
Dear reader, I ran my super (maybe not so) smart algorithm to detect dust aerosols, I got some information, but I got other stuff that is a little confusing, so I need some of your input. Here is the story as reported by the US Weather service...
"It is a dusty day across El Paso -- especially east of the Franklin
Mountains. Gusty north winds have lofted gypsum from White Sands
National Monument, and the plume has spread south down the Tularosa
Basin. The plume can be seen in Visible Satellite..."
This is the information I got from the web...
1) Aline Jaime's facebook photo (a friend of a friend)
2) Then, this from the US National Wheather Service for El Paso
https://www.facebook.com/US.NationalWeatherService.ElPaso.gov
3) The "true color" image from NASA - Terra - MODIS data at 1740 UTC
4) This the output of my algorithm to detect dust aerosols (soon to be fully published if my advisor is happy with the text):
5) Other view of the event using Hao's aerosol index:
QUESTIONS for the courageous reader:
a) Assume that the "white" area circled on the center is the reported event in White Sands, NM and El Paso, TX. What is that thing on the right? It looks like a wave of dust, but I didn't hear any reports. That area corresponds to Midland, TX, and Odesa, TX.
b) What is that on the left, right in south California? Did anyone reported any dust in California?
-----------Update Nov/3/2011----------
Recent reports show that there was "dusty" activity on the areas of Midland Texas as confirmed by the following NASA GOES videos. It seems like some sort of wave from north to south. Click play to see the Infra-Red GOES West and East data animation.
-------Update Nov/4/2011 ------------
The following is additional information that can be found on the internet.
All these information confirms a Haboob in the Midland - Odesa, TX, area.
"If you go to the RAMSDIS LW difference page found on:
http://rammb.cira.colostate.edu/ramsdis/online/sounder.asp
and choose the "archive" from both the East and West, you can see the
event in West Texas quite clearly. Because of the poor resolution of the
sounder, the much smaller White Sands event is not so clear. That "event"
in the top of the Sea of Cortez is a feature that quite often shows up; but, because I almost never see any "plume" development, I think that it must be an artifact of the underlying surface or just a lot of "haze" as that is just below the Imperial Valley, Mexicali, and Yuma agricultural region. On that day, we had dust in the Mesilla Valley but it was not too
thick and does not show up well in the LW difference imagery -- LW
difference from either MODIS or AVHRR might show it better (as well as
these other events)." - M. P. Bleiweiss
This was taken from a plane, unknown author, yet.
A YouTube video of a concerned citizen on the Odesa - Midland, TX, area.
This video confirms the observation on the ground.
What is a Haboob anyway, and what's the difference between it and a dust storm?
Well, in case you were wondering, here is what an expert on the area answered when asked this question.
"All haboobs are dust storms, but not all dust storms are haboobs. Sort of like the saying that the Eskimos have thirteen different words for snow. And some old-timers I met up in the Panhandle differentiate between a "twister" and a "tornado." A haboob is a stark, well-defined, cloud of dust, advancing as a wall- like an avalanche coming down a snowy slope or an oncoming flash flood (or like when you spill your coffee on a table top and a wave of liquid flows out), a massive wave of oncoming dust, where the dust is confined to a dense layer of onrushing air near the ground. Contrast to the "garden variety" dust storm where the dust rises up from the ground over a large area and it just gets hazier and hazier and the dust sort of thins out steadily as you go upwards in the air, without the discrete, stark "wall" of dust. Nowadays, the haboob-type dust storms are usually caused by turbulent downdrafts spreading away from thunderstorms (those ones in Phoenix this past summer were that type). They are dramatic, but relatively small in size. Haboob-type "walls" of dust associated with the typical cold-season dry cold fronts spreading down the Plains had been almost unheard of for at least 20-25 years, until the last few weeks... BUT this type of "non-thunderstorm haboob" is EXACTLY the class of dust storm that was so prevalent during the Dust Bowl days of the 1930s. I'm not sure exactly what that means... but it can't be good. (Perhaps not surprising though, given that much of west Texas is in a drought WORSE than that of the 1930s)." - Dr. Thomas Gill
NASA is conducting an experiment for get more information of the human reaction on gravity zero, and its effects on the human physical and mental health. Read more...
I would risk to say (with no evidence at this moment except by a common sense guess) that the storm came into Texas during the afternoon of the 18 of Oct. 2012. And traveled through Louisiana today early in the morning, and, this picture is captured a little before noon local time. The image shown here is produced by our "beta" Near-Real-Time (NRT) dust aerosol detection system. And is produced using NASA Terra-MODIS multispectral data.
