Wildfire smoke
Early-November 2000 forest fires in North Carolina and neighboring states
Daily PM2.5 peaked at 84.5 µg/m³ near Charlotte across 7 covered metros home to 8.6 million people. 2 metros recorded their worst day on record; 5 placed a top-ten day.
Counting the extra PM2.5 above each metro's typical day, this event handed the average affected resident ≈ 4.3 cigarettes. Across everyone living in the affected metros, that is the collective equivalent of ≈ 37 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
The North Carolina assessment attributes early-November particulate impacts, including November 2–4, to smoke from forest fires in North Carolina and neighboring states; both events fall within that assessed occurrence. The North Carolina assessment attributes early-November particulate impacts, including the Winston-Salem value and November 2–4 period, to smoke from forest fires in North Carolina and neighboring states.
Sequence: Charlotte (Nov 2) → Augusta (Nov 2) → Winston (Nov 3) → Greensboro (Nov 3) → Richmond (Nov 3) → Durham (Nov 3) → Raleigh (Nov 3)
Affected metros
| Metro | Peak PM2.5 | Cigarettes, whole event | Peak day | All-time standing |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Charlotte-Concord-Gastonia, NC-SC | 84.5 µg/m³ | 8.7 | Nov 3, 2000 | Worst day on record |
| Winston-Salem, NC | 69.7 µg/m³ | 5.7 | Nov 3, 2000 | Worst day on record |
| Greensboro-High Point, NC | 50.8 µg/m³ | 2.3 | Nov 3, 2000 | #3 of its top days |
| Richmond, VA | 48.9 µg/m³ | 4.0 | Nov 4, 2000 | #7 of its top days |
| Durham-Chapel Hill, NC | 43 µg/m³ | 3.6 | Nov 4, 2000 | #5 of its top days |
| Augusta-Richmond County, GA-SC | 41.9 µg/m³ | 1.9 | Nov 2, 2000 | #20 of its top days |
| Raleigh, NC | 40.2 µg/m³ | 3.7 | Nov 3, 2000 | #16 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
Official records
- NOAA Storm Events Wildfire, WEST VIRGINIA, Nov 2, 2000 "Brush fires caused smoke to limit visibility across the southern coal fields. Surface visibilities of 2 to 5 miles were common. The fires did not get out of control, and were eventually contained by state forestry per…" record →
EPA AQS monitor qualifier 10
- AQS PM2.5 qualifier E — Forest Fire. EPA AQS carries an agency-submitted request-exclusion qualifier (E, Forest Fire.) on 2 PM2.5 samples in the candidate CBSA on 2000-11-03, 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.
- AQS PM2.5 qualifier E — Forest Fire. EPA AQS carries an agency-submitted request-exclusion qualifier (E, Forest Fire.) on 4 PM2.5 samples in the candidate CBSA on 2000-11-02, 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.
- 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 2000-11-04, 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 1 PM2.5 sample in the candidate CBSA on 2000-11-04, 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 1 PM2.5 sample in the candidate CBSA on 2000-11-04, 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 1 PM2.5 sample in the candidate CBSA on 2000-11-03, 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 1 PM2.5 sample in the candidate CBSA on 2000-11-03, 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 1 PM2.5 sample in the candidate CBSA on 2000-11-03, 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 1 PM2.5 sample in the candidate CBSA on 2000-11-04, 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 1 PM2.5 sample in the candidate CBSA on 2000-11-04, 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.
Agency and publisher pages 1
- 2000 Ambient Air Quality Report The state assessment says forest-fire smoke in North Carolina and neighboring states affected particulate samplers in early November 2000, especially November 2–4 and 8; it identifies a 84.5 µg/m3 PM2.5 value in Charlotte among fire-caused flagged values.
What remains uncertain
- AQS qualifiers are submitting-agency causal flags and do not by themselves establish EPA concurrence.
- The supplied evidence does not name or identify the individual fires.
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.