Those who haven’t finished washing off the dust from their cars after Sunday’s dusting might want to hold off a little longer.
Thursday is expected to see nearly a repeat of this past weekend’s windy conditions, which saw most of the Permian Basin, including New Mexico, slammed with dust storms.
The widespread wind event is expected for Thursday with a system blowing in from southern California and moving eastward.
Wind speeds of up to 65 miles per hour are expected for Thursday.
Wednesday saw the return of high wind speeds after two days of relative calm in Odessa.
“The real big day will be Thursday,” Forecaster at the National Weather Service in Midland David Munyan said. “Unfortunately, it could very well be a repeat of Sunday. There will be widespread high winds, potentially damaging winds, upwards of 60-65 miles per hour. We’ll see even stronger gusts likely across the mountains.”
Thursday’s high will be 66 degrees with a low of 44.
Sunday saw blowing dust all over the high plains and Permian Basin including Odessa.
On Sunday, areas such as New Mexico and El Paso saw even heavier winds while Lubbock had wind gusts of up to 100 miles an hour, knocking down power lines.
Munyan says the highest winds could blow in the southern parts of Permian Basin including the mountain regions including the Davis and Guadalupe Mountains.
“I know the Guadalupe Mountains on Sunday had a peak wind gust of 103 miles per hour,” Munyan said. “We could see something very similar on Thursday.”
Whereas Sunday’s winds picked up in the afternoon, Munyan says to expect wind speeds to ramp up a bit earlier on Thursday.
“We’ll see winds pick up in the late morning and then peak around 3 p.m. and then it’ll gradually die down into the evening,” Munyan said.
With the risk of widespread winds that are expected, there’s the risk of blowing dust.
“Each event is different as far as the wind and where the dust is sourced from,” Munyan said. “On Sunday, we saw a lot of the dust sourced from the Chihuahuan Desert across northern Mexico and parts of south central New Mexico and then that carried all the way into the far West Texas and Permian Basin. It’ll depend on how big that system is and how it sets up (Thursday) but we could see pretty similar conditions to what we saw on Sunday.”
Visibility could be reduced to a quarter mile in some places from the blowing dust.
“Many areas across southeast New Mexico and Lamesa could see blinding visibility,” Munyan said. “Fortunately, those same areas may not get hit. The track of this storm is further south than the one on Sunday. The stronger winds should be in the south, below 20 and 10 towards Big Bend.”
With relative humidity expected to be as low as 10 percent and west winds blowing over 50 miles an hour, there’s always the risk of fire danger as Munyan is urging people to be cautious and not do anything that’ll cause a spark.
“Of course, having such dry air like we do right now, the wind alone pose a big threat to fires,” Munyan said. “We have critical fire danger tomorrow but maybe a little less than a risk than what we had on Sunday. But when you have such high winds, that’s what can help start a fire. We try to encourage the public to stop doing any outdoor activities and nothing that’ll cause a spark. Don’t throw cigarettes out the window. We can even see downed power lines that can start a fire.”
For up to date weather information, go to https://www.weather.gov/maf/.
