Wildfire smoke
2021-06-08 Albuquerque wildfire-smoke episode
Named sources Mescal Fire 72,250 acres , AZ · IRWIN 2021-AZGID-000387 Telegraph Fire 180,757 acres , AZ · IRWIN 2021-AZTNF-001255
Daily PM2.5 peaked at 57.9 µg/m³ near Albuquerque across 1 covered metro home to 926,303 people. 1 metro placed a top-ten day in their record.
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 ≈ 3.5 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
Supplied qualified evidence supports wildfire-smoke as the root cause. The grouping includes only events linked by explicit shared episode evidence; otherwise this remains a single-event episode.
Affected metros
| Metro | Peak PM2.5 | Cigarettes, whole event | Peak day | All-time standing |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Albuquerque, NM | 57.9 µg/m³ | 4.4 | Jun 8, 2021 | #3 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
NWS Air Quality Alert 1
- Air Quality Alert AQAABQ An archived NWS Air Quality Alert for Albuquerque, NM, issued 2021-06-09T12:46Z, explicitly identifies wildfire smoke. IEM is the archive, not the official system of record.
Agency and publisher pages 2
- Air Quality June Report The City report identifies June 8, 2021 Albuquerque PM2.5 as heavy smoke from the Mescal and Telegraph wildfires near Phoenix, Arizona.
- Why is it so smoky in Albuquerque? The City meteorologist told KOAT that smoke was drifting into New Mexico from the Mescal and Telegraph fires in Arizona.
What remains uncertain
- The supplied evidence resolves cause but does not establish identity with another candidate episode.
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.