City of Albuquerque Environmental Health Department official
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.
Wildfire smoke Agency determination
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.
Why we think this happened
The basis for “Wildfire smoke”
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.
Agency determination A government body issued a record naming this cause for this event: an NWS air-quality alert, a NOAA Storm Events record, or a state or local official archive.
National Weather Service via Iowa Environmental Mesonet archive · Jun 9, 2021 corroborates
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.
KOAT · Jun 8, 2021 corroborates
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.
Evidence path
From source to city
A cause is more convincing when the record connects three things: something happened, the air mass moved toward the region, and local instruments responded. Here is how much of that chain is documented for this event.
- 1Documented
Source or mechanism
Wildfire smoke
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.
View supporting source ↗ - 2Documented
Air-mass movement
Transport into the affected region is documented
The City meteorologist told KOAT that smoke was drifting into New Mexico from the Mescal and Telegraph fires in Arizona.
View transport source ↗ - 3Documented
Local response
57.9 µg/m³ near Albuquerque
EPA monitors recorded the event across 1 metro. The peak daily concentration is roughly 2.6 cigarette-equivalents at the outdoor daily rate.
Inspect the pollutant and weather signals ↓
Event autopsy
What the instruments saw
Before, during, and after the episode: nearby pollutant monitors and surface-weather stations show what changed. This context tests the “Wildfire smoke” explanation; it does not assign the cause by itself.
Albuquerque, NM
Monitor comparison window 2021-06-05 to 2021-06-12 · PM2.5 target: SOUTH VALLEY
84% above nearby days
About the same as surrounding days
33% higher than surrounding days
Pollution fingerprint
Metro-wide median of reporting monitors PM2.5 32.8 µg/m³
84% higher than surrounding days
Before6.71 µg/m³ Event32.8 µg/m³ After17.6 µg/m³
PM10 69 µg/m³
33% higher than surrounding days
Before35 µg/m³ Event69 µg/m³ After59 µg/m³
Carbon monoxide 0.229 ppm
81% higher than surrounding days
Before0.082 ppm Event0.229 ppm After0.117 ppm
Nitrogen dioxide 9.59 ppb
35% higher than surrounding days
Before5.80 ppb Event9.59 ppb After6.77 ppb
Sulfur dioxide 0.819 ppb
9% higher than surrounding days
Before0.738 ppb Event0.819 ppb After0.771 ppb
Ozone 0.051 ppm
8% higher than surrounding days
Before0.045 ppm Event0.051 ppm After0.046 ppm
Atmospheric conditions
Nearby EPA weather observations29% lower than surrounding days
About the same as surrounding days
About the same as surrounding days
About the same as surrounding days
Source: U.S. EPA AirData daily observations and, where available, nearby ASOS/AWOS surface observations. Values are descriptive medians over the retained monitor set; missing measurements remain missing. Transport and source evidence remain separate layers because this instrument pattern does not assign a cause by itself.
Measured daily PM2.5 at EPA monitors, as cigarette-equivalents
EPA monitors sit in metro areas, so the colour clusters there. Land between and beyond
them is unmeasured, not clean: this map shows where IAQng has readings, not the extent
of the smoke.
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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.
Views from the selected metro
Camera views near
Select a metro on the map to see nearby cameras. Where an operator archive reaches the event, drag the divider to compare two moments, adjust either date and time, or play the available event-day frames. Camera imagery is visual context, not an air-quality measurement or proof of smoke.
No useful public camera views are currently available within 80 km of this metro.
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.
Public evidence library
What supports this account
Each card states what a source supports—and what it does not. Official records, research, reporting, community observations, and transparent inferences remain visibly different kinds of evidence.
NWS Air Quality Alert 1
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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
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The City report identifies June 8, 2021 Albuquerque PM2.5 as heavy smoke from the Mescal and Telegraph wildfires near Phoenix, Arizona.
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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
Agency determination A government body issued a record naming this cause for this event: an NWS air-quality alert, a NOAA Storm Events record, or a state or local official archive.
This episode was grouped from the monitor record by the catalog pipeline and given its cause from the evidence listed above. It has not been individually reviewed and signed off, so its boundaries, cause, and name may change as evidence accumulates. Grouping policy common_sense_root_cause_grouping.v2. The cause label reflects the assembled evidence above, not an IAQng detection formula. If it is wrong, tell us.