Wildfire smoke
2023 June 27–29 Des Moines-West Des Moines wildfire smoke episode
Daily PM2.5 peaked at 76.8 µg/m³ near Des Moines across 1 covered metro home to 753,913 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 ≈ 7.2 cigarettes. Across everyone living in the affected metros, that is the collective equivalent of ≈ 5.4 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 supplied evidence supports wildfire smoke for the June 27–29 Des Moines-West Des Moines event. No other supplied event was merged without evidence of the same coherent occurrence.
Affected metros
| Metro | Peak PM2.5 | Cigarettes, whole event | Peak day | All-time standing |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Des Moines-West Des Moines, IA | 76.8 µg/m³ | 8.3 | Jun 28, 2023 | #2 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
Agency and publisher pages 1
- Advisory Iowa DNR’s June 27 advisory index records a statewide air-quality advisory, with fine-particulate exceedances expected over eastern Iowa.
What remains uncertain
- The resolution relies on qualified transport, grouping, observation, or impact evidence rather than a direct cause-attribution record.
- The supplied evidence does not identify a sufficiently specific shared fire or origin region for a broader merge.
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.