Wildfire smoke
2025-06-07 wildfire smoke episode affecting Rochester, NY, Syracuse, NY
Daily PM2.5 peaked at 49.4 µg/m³ near Rochester across 2 covered metros home to 1.7 million 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 ≈ 2.7 cigarettes. Across everyone living in the affected metros, that is the collective equivalent of ≈ 4.5 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
The supplied retained evidence supports wildfire smoke for this event; no supplied evidence establishes membership in a broader time-bounded episode.
Sequence: Rochester (Jun 7) → Syracuse (Jun 8)
Affected metros
| Metro | Peak PM2.5 | Cigarettes, whole event | Peak day | All-time standing |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Rochester, NY | 49.4 µg/m³ | 4.0 | Jun 7, 2025 | #6 of its top days |
| Syracuse, NY | 36.5 µg/m³ | 1.7 | Jun 8, 2025 | #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
News discovery (GDELT) 1
- Rochester hazy skies caused by Canadian wildfires ; doctor urges caution for those with respiratory issues News10NBC explicitly reported that Canadian wildfire smoke caused Rochester's June 7 haze and affected local air quality.
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.