March 18, 2014: Dust season has resumed at Senator Beck Basin. As of observation and collection at Swamp Angel Study Plot this Tuesday morning, we must report that a modest new dust layer D2-WY 2014 was deposited ‘wet’, overnight last night, within a trace of precipitation. Based on our Putney wind data, and imagery from USGS webcams at Abajo Peak and Island in the Sky showing building dust in the air in late afternoon, we estimate that this dust was deposited on WNW’ly winds between dusk and midnight Monday, March 17. Winds subsequently died down and shifted to due N and NE.
This dust did concentrate, as usual, where wind drifted the new snow containing it, and was easily seen in our ski tracks on the approach into SASP, where we collected a concentrated sample of the D2 dust for USGS’s chemical analysis.
However, the layer is very faint, in profile, within SASP, where we collected our 0.5 m2 mass loading sample.
Windrose for the WY-2014 D2 Dust Event