If you live in El Paso, Las Cruces, or Ciudad Juárez, and feel like you’ve been sucking into the Chihuahua Desert lately, you won’t imagine things. Since the Dust Bowl, the Borderplex region is experiencing its dustiest season, a devastating dust storm that struck North America a century ago.
NASA’s Aqua satellite captured images of air dust from low Earth orbit on April 27. Part of the airborne particles is in the ongoing storm that hit Borderplex, a transnational region of New Mexico, West Texas, West Texas, West Texas and Chihuahua. The imaging storm is just the latest storm in a string, which stuffs dry lake beds and charred soil into the southern sky.
In a release from the NASA Earth Observatory, Thomas Gill, an environmental scientist at the University of Texas, said this year’s dusty season “is really great, something special about the record book.” Gill has tracked dust activity throughout the planet (and borders) for decades.
Jill said the above imaging activity was the tenth “mature” storm of the year – a mature event was a storm that could reduce visibility to less than half a mile. That’s more than five times the average 1.8 storms per year, making 2025 the worst dust season since 1936, when the dust bowl swept the United States and blended into El Paso along 11 storms.
Why are there so many storms this year? You can blame it on drought and record-breaking climate cocktails. March is the most rosy month the region has seen in more than 50 years, Jill said, and the region is in the “worst drought we’ve ever seen in at least a decade.” My allergic clogged sinuses are thanking its lucky star is not in the southwest now.
But sandstorms are more than just a look. These events lead to traffic accidents and increase the risk of heart and lung problems and may worsen the valley fever, a fungal infection. Gill and his colleagues estimate that the damage caused by sandstorms nationwide each year exceeds $150 billion, hitting farmers, the energy and health care industry, and particularly hard-working families.
NASA’s satellites and modeling tools are helping scientists monitor and better understand the spread of dust, and in the atmosphere, particles can travel significant distances. Santiago Gasso, an atmospheric scientist at the University of Maryland, said a March storm sent particles to Greenland.
So far, Borderplex has accumulated 28 days of dusty days in 2025, which has surpassed the annual average of 22 for the first quarter century, and there is more dust on the forecast for the region this weekend. If you don’t need it, you may want to stick to cleaning your windows.
