National Weather Service El Paso · May 1, 2025 official
April 2025 Weather Summary for El Paso and Southern New Mexico
The NWS monthly summary says a strong storm crossed the El Paso area April 17-19 with strong winds and considerable blowing dust.
Dust Likely
2025-04-17 to 2025-04-18 Windblown regional desert dust episode
Daily PM2.5 peaked at 107.2 µg/m³ near El Paso across 1 covered metro home to 879,392 people. 1 metro placed a top-ten day in their record.
Counting the extra PM2.5 above each metro's typical day, this event handed the average affected resident ≈ 8.7 cigarettes. Across everyone living in the affected metros, that is the collective equivalent of ≈ 7.7 million cigarettes. An awareness illustration of outdoor exposure at 22 µg/m³ per cigarette (Berkeley Earth), counting only the event's ranked days; not a medical dose.
Why we think this happened
The basis for “Dust”
The National Weather Service documents strong winds and considerable blowing dust across the El Paso area during April 17-19, while an independent exact-date local report corroborates the dust event.
Likely Applicable reporting or a supported inference makes this the best current causal explanation.
Reddit / r/ElPaso corroborates
El Paso dust discussion after April 17, 2025
Residents discussed a dust event immediately after the supplied date.
NOAA/NCEI Storm Events Database · Apr 18, 2025 corroborates
NWS Dust Storm record, EASTERN/CENTRAL EL PASO COUNTY, TEXAS (2025-04-18)
One quarter mile visibility was reported near Loop 375 and Interstate 10 near Sparks.
Evidence path
From source to city
A cause is more convincing when the record connects three things: something happened, the air mass moved toward the region, and local instruments responded. Here is how much of that chain is documented for this event.
- 1Documented
Source or mechanism
Dust
The NWS monthly summary says a strong storm crossed the El Paso area April 17-19 with strong winds and considerable blowing dust.
View supporting source ↗ - 2Research gap
Air-mass movement
The transport path has not been reconstructed
The retained record does not yet show how air traveled from the proposed source to these metros. A trajectory replay or dated plume analysis belongs here.
- 3Documented
Local response
107.2 µg/m³ near El Paso
NOAA's Storm Events record documents quarter-mile visibility in an El Paso County dust storm on April 18, one day after the candidate date. It is temporal-context corroboration and does not quantify PM2.5 contribution.
Inspect the pollutant and weather signals ↓
Event autopsy
What the instruments saw
Before, during, and after the episode: nearby pollutant monitors and surface-weather stations show what changed. This context tests the “Dust” explanation; it does not assign the cause by itself.
El Paso, TX
Monitor comparison window 2025-04-14 to 2025-04-21 · PM2.5 target: Ascarate Park SE
433% above nearby days
38% higher than surrounding days
495% higher than surrounding days
Pollution fingerprint
Metro-wide median of reporting monitors PM2.5 85 µg/m³
433% higher than surrounding days
Before15.7 µg/m³ Event85 µg/m³ After8.09 µg/m³
PM10 732 µg/m³
495% higher than surrounding days
Before94 µg/m³ Event732 µg/m³ After51 µg/m³
Carbon monoxide 0.240 ppm
12% lower than surrounding days
Before0.288 ppm Event0.240 ppm After0.287 ppm
Nitrogen dioxide 4.21 ppb
55% lower than surrounding days
Before12.5 ppb Event4.21 ppb After8.89 ppb
Sulfur dioxide 0.127 ppb
7% higher than surrounding days
Before0.529 ppb Event0.127 ppb After-0.004 ppb
Ozone 0.034 ppm
10% lower than surrounding days
Before0.038 ppm Event0.034 ppm After0.037 ppm
Atmospheric conditions
Nearby EPA weather observations19% lower than surrounding days
About the same as surrounding days
6% higher than surrounding days
38% higher than surrounding days
Source: U.S. EPA AirData daily observations and, where available, nearby ASOS/AWOS surface observations. Values are descriptive medians over the retained monitor set; missing measurements remain missing. Transport and source evidence remain separate layers because this instrument pattern does not assign a cause by itself.
Measured daily PM2.5 at EPA monitors, as cigarette-equivalents
EPA monitors sit in metro areas, so the colour clusters there. Land between and beyond
them is unmeasured, not clean: this map shows where IAQng has readings, not the extent
of the smoke.
—
Episode peak
-- cigarettes
The smoke map's scale, replayed over this event: the surface interpolates between covered metros' daily records, framed to the affected region. Hover for a reading, click a metro to pin it to the card. Days a monitor did not report draw nothing.
Views from the selected metro
Camera views near
Select a metro on the map to see nearby cameras. Where an operator archive reaches the event, drag the divider to compare two moments, adjust either date and time, or play the available event-day frames. Camera imagery is visual context, not an air-quality measurement or proof of smoke.
No useful public camera views are currently available within 80 km of this metro.
Affected metros
| Metro | Peak PM2.5 | Cigarettes, whole event | Peak day | All-time standing |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| El Paso, TX | 107.2 µg/m³ | 9.6 | Apr 17, 2025 | #8 of its top days |
"Cigarettes, whole event" totals a metro's ranked event days at 22 µg/m³ per cigarette: what a person outdoors there breathed across the event, as the illustration. "All-time standing" is where this episode's days sit in each metro's ranked record (worst-area measure, since 1999). Full local context is on each metro's Air Records page.
Public evidence library
What supports this account
Each card states what a source supports—and what it does not. Official records, research, reporting, community observations, and transparent inferences remain visibly different kinds of evidence.
April 2025 Weather Summary for El Paso and Southern New Mexico
National Weather Service El Paso
The NWS monthly summary says a strong storm crossed the El Paso area April 17-19 with strong winds and considerable blowing dust.
What it supports
An official source supports the attributed cause for the stated place and dates.
Limit
The weather summary establishes the exact-window dust episode but does not quantify the dust-only fraction of the daily PM2.5 measurement.
El Paso dust discussion after April 17, 2025
Reddit / r/ElPaso
Residents discussed a dust event immediately after the supplied date.
What it supports
A retained source supports the attributed cause for the stated place and dates.
What remains uncertain
- The sources establish the dominant episode cause but do not quantify the dust-only fraction of daily PM2.5.
Status and provenance
Likely Applicable reporting or a supported inference makes this the best current causal explanation.
This episode was grouped from the monitor record by the catalog pipeline and given its cause from the evidence listed above. It has not been individually reviewed and signed off, so its boundaries, cause, and name may change as evidence accumulates. Grouping policy common_sense_root_cause_grouping.v2. The cause label reflects the assembled evidence above, not an IAQng detection formula. If it is wrong, tell us.