Prescribed fire Corroborated
Daily PM2.5 peaked at 24 µg/m³ near Deltona across 1 covered metro home to 739,516 people.
Why we think this happened
Qualified supplied evidence supports prescribed-fire smoke as the root cause of this event. The supplied record does not establish a coherent shared occurrence with neighboring candidates, so the episode remains event-specific.
Corroborated Independent reporting agrees on the cause, with no agency determination, monitor flag, or published assessment behind it.
WKMG ClickOrlando · Mar 4, 2022 corroborates
The report explicitly states that prescribed-burn smoke lingered in Volusia County near Daytona Beach during the event window, citing Florida Highway Patrol observations and a Florida Forest Service burn notice.
Evidence path
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.
Source or mechanism
The report explicitly states that prescribed-burn smoke lingered in Volusia County near Daytona Beach during the event window, citing Florida Highway Patrol observations and a Florida Forest Service burn notice.
View supporting source ↗Air-mass movement
The retained record does not yet show how air traveled from the proposed source to these metros. A trajectory replay or dated plume analysis belongs here.
Local response
EPA monitors recorded the event across 1 metro. The peak daily concentration is roughly 1.1 cigarette-equivalents at the outdoor daily rate.
Inspect the pollutant and weather signals ↓Event autopsy
Before, during, and after the episode: nearby pollutant monitors and surface-weather stations show what changed. This context tests the “Prescribed fire” explanation; it does not assign the cause by itself.
Deltona-Daytona Beach-Ormond Beach, FL
Monitor comparison window 2022-03-01 to 2022-03-07 · PM2.5 target: DAYTONA BLIND SERVICES
90% above nearby days
21% higher than surrounding days
90% higher than surrounding days
21% higher than surrounding days
56% higher than 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.
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.
| Metro | Peak PM2.5 | Cigarettes, whole event | Peak day | All-time standing |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Deltona-Daytona Beach-Ormond Beach, FL | 24 µg/m³ | 1.1 | Mar 4, 2022 | #22 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
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.
I-95 reopens in Volusia 24 hours after 3 killed in pileup caused by ‘super fog’
The report explicitly states that prescribed-burn smoke lingered in Volusia County near Daytona Beach during the event window, citing Florida Highway Patrol observations and a Florida Forest Service burn notice.
Cited authorities: Florida Forest Service
Corroborated Independent reporting agrees on the cause, with no agency determination, monitor flag, or published assessment behind it.
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.