Wildfire smoke
1999-05-25 wildfire smoke episode affecting Miami-Fort Lauderdale-West Palm Beach, FL
Named source Palm Beach County brush fire
Daily PM2.5 peaked at 46.9 µg/m³ near Miami across 1 covered metro home to 6.5 million people.
Counting the extra PM2.5 above each metro's typical day, this event handed the average affected resident ≈ 1.7 cigarettes. Across everyone living in the affected metros, that is the collective equivalent of ≈ 11 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 evidence supports wildfire smoke as the broad root cause.
Affected metros
| Metro | Peak PM2.5 | Cigarettes, whole event | Peak day | All-time standing |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Miami-Fort Lauderdale-West Palm Beach, FL | 46.9 µg/m³ | 2.1 | May 25, 1999 | #12 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, FLORIDA, May 21, 1999 "A lightning-initiated brush fire scorched 12,000 acres of sawgrass in western Palm Beach County. The smoke drifted over the metropolitan areas of Palm Beach, Broward and Dade counties prompting local health alerts. A mob…" record →
- NOAA Storm Events Wildfire, FLORIDA, May 23, 1999 "A lightning-initiated brush fire scorched 12,000 acres of sawgrass in western Palm Beach County. The smoke drifted over the metropolitan areas of Palm Beach, Broward and Dade counties prompting local health alerts. A mob…" record →
- NOAA Storm Events Wildfire, FLORIDA, May 23, 1999 "A lightning-initiated brush fire scorched 12,000 acres of sawgrass in western Palm Beach County. The smoke drifted over the metropolitan areas of Palm Beach, Broward and Dade counties prompting local health alerts. A mob…" record →
NOAA Storm Events 1
- May 1999 South Florida wildfire and smoke episode NOAA records a lightning-initiated Palm Beach County brush fire through May 25 and states that its smoke drifted across Palm Beach, Broward, and Dade metropolitan areas, prompting health alerts. This corroborates wildfire smoke in the event place and window but does not quantify its contribution to measured surface PM2.5.
What remains uncertain
- The evidence supports regional influence or transport but does not quantify the contribution to observed PM2.5.
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.