Dust Storm Hits Eastern Washington

The visible satellite image this afternoon clearly shows a dust storm over the Columbia Basin, stretching from around Moses Lake to the east (orange arrow shows the feature)

The Washington DOD cams, a great source of weather information, showed a very obscured sky near Ritzville around 2 PM.

Another cam near Moses Lake showed the beginning of the event around 9 AM this morning.

My colleagues at the National Weather Service in Spokane made an excellent forecast of this dust event, providing warnings yesterday when it was clear low-level winds would be strong.  In some places, visibility has dropped down to less than 1/4 mile.   Occasionally down to zero

The strongest gusts observed today are shown below, with some exceeding 50 mph!

High-resolution models have been forecasting this wind event for a while.  To illustrate here are the sustained winds predicted for 2 PM from this morning's model run (started at 5 AM).  Yellow colors are strong sustained winds of 20 kts or more.  Gusts are stronger.

Driving in dust storms is dangerous and often associated with multicar collisions, some with as many as 50-100 cars.   

So be VERY careful if you are driving in dust-influenced eastern WA today.    Winds should lessen tonight.