With the arrival of spring and Southern Nevada’s windy season, residents can look several days ahead at the valley’s predicted air quality conditions thanks to a new Clark County forecast page that is now online.

Air Quality officials recently unveiled the forecast page, in conjunction with the revival of an advertising campaign featuring Dusty “the dusthole,” a humorous fool who idiotically indulges in bad driving behaviors that raise dust. Various components of the campaign – which consists of newspaper ads and television and radio commercials – will run through the end of April. The campaign reminds residents not to raise dust, especially during spring when windy conditions often mean higher levels of airborne dust. The forecast page may be reached via the county’s front page at www.accessclarkcounty.com.

“Dust storms can happen any time of the year in Southern Nevada, but they tend to occur most often during the spring and fall, when the valley tends to get its highest winds,” said Christine Robinson, director of the county’s Air Quality and Environmental Management Department. “With all our recent rain, thick desert crust has formed across a lot of vacant land in the urban valley. This is a good time of year to remind residents to avoid disturbing those vacant lands, to drive on paved roads and prevent dust as much as possible.”

A natural desert crust can typically withstand winds of up to 25 miles per hour or more before dirt and debris break loose and become airborne, officials say.  Once disturbed; however, light winds can carry dust for miles. Air quality officials issue advisories for dust to the local media, schools, government jurisdictions and the National Weather Service if conditions are dry and winds of 25 miles or more are expected. The forecast page is a new tool for keeping the public updated on the status of advisories and alerts. Alerts will be posted on the site if any of the department’s 21 monitoring stations detect unhealthy air quality conditions. The valley can log a violation of federal air quality standards if unhealthy levels of a pollutant occur at a single site in the valley over a specific period of time set by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).                                                

“Forecasting air quality conditions is a relatively new field of science that takes several meteorological factors into consideration, including atmospheric temperature, pressure and humidity,” said Air Quality’s staff meteorologist, Phillip Wiker. “It’s exciting for Clark County to be leading the way in gathering this information and making it available to the public.”

The page features a five-day forecast for three pollutants of concern in the valley: dust, carbon monoxide and ozone. Wiker or another member of the department’s monitoring division staff will update the forecast on weekday mornings. Updates also will be posted on the page on weekends if an air quality advisory is in effect or the department issues an air quality alert for blowing dust or another pollutant of concern.

 The page also features a link to current and past air quality conditions   now available in the monitoring section of Air Quality’s website.

“When you look at data from our monitoring stations, it’s important to recognize that brief spikes in the level of an air pollutant doesn’t mean we have bad air quality,” Robinson said. “The EPA is looking at concentrations of pollutants over specific periods of times, ranging from one-hour standards to annual standards.”

The valley has not logged a single violation of carbon monoxide standards since 1998. Clark County is in the process of developing a maintenance plan for dealing with carbon monoxide, a step that will lead to being removed from the EPA’s nonattainment list for that pollutant.

The Las Vegas Valley does not yet meet the EPA’s 24-hour standard for dust and a new eight-hour standard for ozone. The valley is required to meet health standards for dust by 2006 or face additional federally required control measures. Clark County was designated as a nonattainment area for ozone in September 2004 and has until 2007 to develop a plan to deal with ozone, primarily a summertime pollutant in Southern Nevada. County officials are developing dust and ozone plans now.

“There really are seasons for each of these pollutants,” Wiker explained. “Dust tends to be an issue in the spring or fall, while historically carbon monoxide has been a wintertime pollutant. Ozone is a concern primarily during the late spring and early summer.”

With the arrival of the valley’s spring windy season, Air Quality officials say residents can help reduce dust in several ways:

·         Call Clark County’s Dust Hotline at (702) 385-DUST (3878) to report excessive amounts of blowing dust.

·         Drive slowly on unpaved roads.

·         Don’t take short cuts across vacant lots.

·         Obey no-trespassing signs.

·         Ride ATVs and other off-road vehicles outside the urban Las Vegas Valley.

·         Fence off barren property or cover it with gravel or desert-friendly landscaping.

·         Combine vehicle trips to reduce how often you start your car and the number of miles you travel.

·         Car pool and/or use alternative methods of transportation when possible.