Wildfire smoke
2007-05-17 wildfire smoke episode affecting Jacksonville, FL, Deltona-Daytona Beach-Ormond Beach, FL
Daily PM2.5 peaked at 87.9 µg/m³ near Jacksonville across 2 covered metros home to 2.5 million people. 1 metro recorded their worst day on record; 2 placed a top-ten day.
Counting the extra PM2.5 above each metro's typical day, this event handed the average affected resident ≈ 3.8 cigarettes. Across everyone living in the affected metros, that is the collective equivalent of ≈ 9.4 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: Jacksonville (May 17) → Deltona (May 18)
Affected metros
| Metro | Peak PM2.5 | Cigarettes, whole event | Peak day | All-time standing |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Jacksonville, FL | 87.9 µg/m³ | 5.7 | May 17, 2007 | Worst day on record |
| Deltona-Daytona Beach-Ormond Beach, FL | 29.7 µg/m³ | 1.3 | May 18, 2007 | #10 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 3
- AQS PM2.5 qualifier RT — Wildfire-U. S. EPA AQS carries an agency-submitted request-exclusion qualifier (RT, Wildfire-U. S.) on 1 PM2.5 sample in the candidate CBSA on 2007-05-18, 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 RT — Wildfire-U. S. EPA AQS carries an agency-submitted request-exclusion qualifier (RT, Wildfire-U. S.) on 2 PM2.5 samples in the candidate CBSA on 2007-05-17, 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 RT — Wildfire-U. S. EPA AQS carries an agency-submitted request-exclusion qualifier (RT, Wildfire-U. S.) on 2 PM2.5 samples in the candidate CBSA on 2007-05-18, 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.
Agency and publisher pages 2
- Fires in Georgia and Florida NASA satellite reporting detected active fire locations in northern Florida and southern Georgia on May 16, with the Bugaboo Fire straddling the state line. It does not attribute the Jacksonville or Daytona PM2.5 observations.
- Florida Bugaboo Fire Incident Action Plan, May 17, 2007 The incident action plan confirms the Florida Bugaboo wildfire was active on the candidate date; it does not assess ambient PM2.5 transport to the affected metros.
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.