Wildfire smoke
2000-11-08 wildfire smoke episode affecting Washington-Arlington-Alexandria, DC-VA-MD-WV, Harrisburg-Carlisle, PA
Daily PM2.5 peaked at 54.7 µg/m³ near Harrisburg across 2 covered metros home to 7.1 million people.
Counting the extra PM2.5 above each metro's typical day, this event handed the average affected resident ≈ 1.9 cigarettes. Across everyone living in the affected metros, that is the collective equivalent of ≈ 13 million cigarettes. An awareness illustration of outdoor exposure at 22 µg/m³ per cigarette (Berkeley Earth), counting only the event's ranked days; not a medical dose.
Episode peak
-- cigarettes
The smoke map's scale, replayed over this event: the surface interpolates between covered metros' daily records, framed to the affected region. Hover for a reading, click a metro to pin it to the card. Days a monitor did not report draw nothing.
What happened, in the record
Qualified frozen causal evidence supports wildfire smoke as the broad root cause.
Sequence: Washington (Nov 8) → Harrisburg (Nov 9)
Affected metros
| Metro | Peak PM2.5 | Cigarettes, whole event | Peak day | All-time standing |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Harrisburg-Carlisle, PA | 54.7 µg/m³ | 2.5 | Nov 9, 2000 | #21 of its top days |
| Washington-Arlington-Alexandria, DC-VA-MD-WV | 51.5 µg/m³ | 2.3 | Nov 8, 2000 | #23 of its top days |
"Cigarettes, whole event" totals a metro's ranked event days at 22 µg/m³ per cigarette: what a person outdoors there breathed across the event, as the illustration. "All-time standing" is where this episode's days sit in each metro's ranked record (worst-area measure, since 1999). Full local context is on each metro's Air Records page.
The evidence
EPA AQS monitor qualifier 2
- AQS PM2.5 qualifier E — Forest Fire. EPA AQS carries an agency-submitted request-exclusion qualifier (E, Forest Fire.) on 1 PM2.5 sample in the candidate CBSA on 2000-11-09, identifying wildfire smoke as affecting the sample. A request-exclusion qualifier is an official submitting-agency causal claim, but this endpoint does not establish EPA concurrence.
- AQS PM2.5 qualifier E — Forest Fire. EPA AQS carries an agency-submitted request-exclusion qualifier (E, Forest Fire.) on 8 PM2.5 samples in the candidate CBSA on 2000-11-08, identifying wildfire smoke as affecting the samples. A request-exclusion qualifier is an official submitting-agency causal claim, but this endpoint does not establish EPA concurrence.
What remains uncertain
- AQS qualifiers are submitting-agency causal flags and do not by themselves establish EPA concurrence.
Status and provenance
Research preview: this record carries research-only status and its boundaries, cause, and name may change as evidence review completes. Grouping policy common_sense_root_cause_grouping.v2. The cause label reflects the assembled evidence above, not an IAQng detection formula.