Wildfire smoke
2011-06-02 through 2011-06-04 wildfire-smoke episode affecting Albuquerque, NM
Named sources Wallow Fire Horseshoe Fire
Daily PM2.5 peaked at 53.3 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 ≈ 5.4 cigarettes. Across everyone living in the affected metros, that is the collective equivalent of ≈ 5.0 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
Official monitor qualifiers and contemporaneous transport evidence support wildfire smoke throughout the June 2-4 Albuquerque episode; the supplied meteorological account identifies smoke transported from Arizona's Wallow and Horseshoe fires.
Affected metros
| Metro | Peak PM2.5 | Cigarettes, whole event | Peak day | All-time standing |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Albuquerque, NM | 53.3 µg/m³ | 6.3 | Jun 4, 2011 | #4 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 5
- AQS PM2.5 qualifier IT — Wildfire-U. S. EPA AQS carries an agency-submitted informational qualifier (IT, Wildfire-U. S.) on 24 PM2.5 samples in the candidate CBSA on 2011-06-04, identifying wildfire smoke as affecting the samples. An informational qualifier is an official submitting-agency flag, not a request for exclusion or an EPA-concurred determination.
- 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 2011-06-04, 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 2011-06-03, 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 3 PM2.5 samples in the candidate CBSA on 2011-06-02, 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 IT — Wildfire-U. S. EPA AQS carries an agency-submitted informational qualifier (IT, Wildfire-U. S.) on 24 PM2.5 samples in the candidate CBSA on 2011-06-03, identifying wildfire smoke 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 1
- Arizona fires burn tens of thousands of acres A National Weather Service meteorologist said prevailing southwest-to-northeast winds were transporting smoke from Arizona's Wallow and Horseshoe fires into Albuquerque; officials issued an air-quality alert.
What remains uncertain
- Agency-submitted AQS qualifiers are causal flags but 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.