Satellite images seen this afternoon clearly show the dust storm over the Columbia Basin, extending from around Moses Lake to the east (orange arrows show features)
Washington DOD cameras, a great source of weather information, showed very dark skies near Ritzville around 2 p.m.
Another camera near Moses Lake shows the start of the event around 9 a.m. this morning.
My colleagues at the National Weather Service in Spokane provided an excellent forecast for this dust event, issuing a warning yesterday that when skies cleared, low-level winds would be strong. In some places, visibility was reduced to less than 1/4 mile. Occasionally down to 0
The strongest wind gusts observed today are shown below, with some speeds exceeding 50 mph!
High-resolution models have been forecasting this wind event for some time. To illustrate here is the predicted sustained wind at 2pm from this morning’s model run (which started at 5am). Yellow is strong wind with a speed of 20 kt or more. The wind gusts became stronger.
Driving in dust storms is dangerous and often involves collisions with multiple vehicles, some with as many as 50-100 vehicles.
