Dust
March 14–15, 2025 central U.S. transported-dust episode
Daily PM2.5 peaked at 64.7 µg/m³ near Kansas City across 2 covered metros home to 3.0 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 ≈ 2.3 cigarettes. Across everyone living in the affected metros, that is the collective equivalent of ≈ 6.9 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 supplied evidence supports dust and documents an overlapping or continuing regional occurrence across the proposed members. The supplied evidence supports dust and documents an overlapping or continuing regional occurrence across the proposed members.
Sequence: Kansas City (Mar 14) → Little Rock (Mar 15)
Affected metros
| Metro | Peak PM2.5 | Cigarettes, whole event | Peak day | All-time standing |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Kansas City, MO-KS | 64.7 µg/m³ | 2.9 | Mar 14, 2025 | #3 of its top days |
| Little Rock-North Little Rock-Conway, AR | 50.5 µg/m³ | 2.3 | Mar 15, 2025 | Worst day on record |
"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 1
- AQS PM2.5 qualifier IJ — High Winds. EPA AQS carries an agency-submitted informational qualifier (IJ, High Winds.) on 48 PM2.5 samples in the candidate CBSA on 2025-03-14, identifying windblown or transported dust as affecting the samples. An informational qualifier is an official submitting-agency flag, not a request for exclusion or an EPA-concurred determination.
Agency and publisher pages 4
- KDHE Issues Air Quality Health Advisory due to Dust and Smoke KDHE reported that strong winds were transporting dust and smoke from Oklahoma wildfires and eastern Kansas fires into Kansas, with unhealthy to hazardous air quality possible.
- March 2025 Monthly Summary The NWS monthly summary says strong winds transported dust from the southwestern United States into Arkansas on March 14 and 15.
- Severe Storms on March 14-15, 2025 NWS Little Rock documented dust transported from west Texas and southeast New Mexico across Arkansas on March 14–15, producing haze across the state during this event.
- March 14th Extremely Strong Winds NWS Wichita documented the March 14 dust storm across Texas, Oklahoma, and Kansas during the strong-wind event.
What remains uncertain
- The supplied evidence does not identify or quantify every specific source contributing across all proposed members.
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.