Strong Winds From The East

I have been away in Colorado since February 26th because of family issues. Have just returned and will try to catch up with various weather observations and events during next couple of days.

However, I will comment that I was surprised to see no advisories about today's strong winds when I logged onto the NWS webpage a bit ago. During the drive late this morning and early afternoon from Deming westward along I-10, easterly to southeasterly winds were quite strong, and I estimated gusts of 35 to 40+ mph in places. East of Wilcox, and before "The Thing," a localized dust storm was blowing off the Wilcox Playa northward across I-10. The white clouds of dust were quite thick and fairly deep, although the horizontal extent of the dust plume was fairly narrow - only about a mile. Visibility was reduced to 1/2 to 1 mile for some of this distance. The MesoWest surface plot from 3 pm MST above indicates several gusts over 30 mph, with a maximum gust indicated of 71 mph at the RAWS site on Mt. Hopkins. I also see that TUS has been gusting from 30 to 35 mph, and our big wind chime is ringing away, which usually means gusts of at least 35 mph. I'm sure that I got the best mileage of this trip during the last tankful today because of the strong tail winds.