Living and working in El Paso?

[zix]

How harmful is it to breathe the fine dust the sandstorms/windstorms bring?

[malamute]

Originally Posted by zix

How harmful is it to breathe the fine dust the sandstorms/windstorms bring?

It's not unless you have asthsma. The dust isn't bad for you but the pollution is.

[pepedemaz]

Originally Posted by malamute

We don't get nearly the weather that Minneapolis does. I'm sure you get winds up to 40 mph with gusts of 50 or 60 -- probably with sleet or snow instead of dust. In the spring we get windy days but really few true dust storms, most of the times the sky is blue and the wind just blows litter around but once in a while the wind kind of sucks up a bunch of dust and the sky turns a kind of tan-blue or gray-brown-blue - - drab.

It's not the kind of hard wind you get in some places where you get pelted with pieces of ice or gravel. It's a fine dust -- silt --- that gets in your eyes, mouth, nose, hair and there's a high howling that goes on for a few hours, usually dying down by sunset. It's not particularly enjoyable unless you like picturing yourself in some old Western making your way through a dust storm and tumbleweeds blowing past in which case it can be kind of romantic. The day after a dust storm is especially brilliant and fresh and I'm not sure why that is. We haven't had one of the really bad dust storms for years, mostly just some good windy days. Just a break in the near perfect weather we've become accustomed to having.

The rest of the time, spring is fantastic, summers are great, we have an extra season called the monsoon or rainy season -- very unlike our May and June summer. May and June are dry and warm, July turns humid and then the rains start and they go into August and things are humid and warm except by mid-August it starts cooling down becoming even chilly at night.

Autumn extends up until the week of Christmas and then you turn the heater on at least at night until early February. You get some "cold" days where the high might be 45 degrees and it freezes at night, or it freezes at night and is in the 60's in the daytime. Just enough cold weather to know it's January and not May.

I kind of like dust storms because you know warm weather and summer are on their way. And like I said because they're a break in our otherwise great weather.

Thanks malamute for all that great information! That's good stuff when I can get it straight from the source. In the future if you think of any good details about El Paso it would be great if you could share them with me. Thanks again for your time!

[Muhnay]

EDN Urban Environment Report: What's Your City's SCORE? El Paso, TX (http://www.earthday.net/UER/report/tx_elpaso.html - broken link)

DEADLY.