Prescribed fire Agency determination
Daily PM2.5 peaked at 51.6 µg/m³ near Columbia across 1 covered metro home to 870,193 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 ≈ 1.9 cigarettes. Across everyone living in the affected metros, that is the collective equivalent of ≈ 1.7 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
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.
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.
U.S. EPA Air Quality System and the submitting air monitoring agency · Mar 14, 2024 official
EPA AQS carries an agency-submitted informational qualifier (IM, Prescribed Fire.) on 48 PM2.5 samples in the candidate CBSA on 2024-03-14, identifying prescribed-fire smoke as affecting the samples. An informational qualifier is an official submitting-agency flag, not a request for exclusion or an EPA-concurred determination.
South Carolina air-quality authority via NWS · Mar 14, 2024 corroborates
The alert explicitly attributed the Columbia-area smoke and particulate matter to numerous prescribed burns across the region. IEM is the archive, not the official system of record.
WIS · Mar 14, 2024 corroborates
Contemporaneous reporting says the National Weather Service issued a Midlands alert because smoke and particulate levels had increased, corroborating degraded particulate conditions in Columbia.
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
EPA AQS carries an agency-submitted informational qualifier (IM, Prescribed Fire.) on 48 PM2.5 samples in the candidate CBSA on 2024-03-14, identifying prescribed-fire smoke as affecting the samples. An informational qualifier is an official…
View supporting source ↗Air-mass movement
NOAA HYSPLIT modeled 12 backward paths across multiple arrival times and heights. They show where the air traveled, not which source polluted it.
Explore the modeled paths ↓Local response
Contemporaneous reporting says the National Weather Service issued a Midlands alert because smoke and particulate levels had increased, corroborating degraded particulate conditions in Columbia.
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.
Columbia, SC
Monitor comparison window 2024-03-11 to 2024-03-17 · PM2.5 target: Irmo DJJ
289% above nearby days
27% higher than surrounding days
178% higher than surrounding days
289% higher than surrounding days
178% higher than surrounding days
94% higher than surrounding days
29% higher than surrounding days
52% higher than surrounding days
46% higher than surrounding days
About the same as surrounding days
About the same as surrounding days
27% higher than 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.
Air-mass reconstruction
NOAA HYSPLIT traces the air arriving at each metro backward for 72 hours. Multiple arrival times and heights show whether the broad path is stable—or sensitive to assumptions about when and where the polluted layer arrived.
Air arriving near Columbia
Peak-date arrivals · 2024-03-14
Each line begins 72 hours before arrival and points toward the metro. Color represents arrival height; repeated lines represent 00, 06, 12, and 18 UTC arrival assumptions. A path can show where the air traveled, but it cannot prove which source added the PM2.5.
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
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.
| Metro | Peak PM2.5 | Cigarettes, whole event | Peak day | All-time standing |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Columbia, SC | 51.6 µg/m³ | 2.3 | Mar 14, 2024 | #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.
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.
AQS PM2.5 qualifier IM — Prescribed Fire.
EPA AQS carries an agency-submitted informational qualifier (IM, Prescribed Fire.) on 48 PM2.5 samples in the candidate CBSA on 2024-03-14, identifying prescribed-fire smoke as affecting the samples. An informational qualifier is an official submitting-agency flag, not a request for exclusion or an EPA-concurred determination.
Archived Columbia Air Quality Alert, March 14, 2024
The alert explicitly attributed the Columbia-area smoke and particulate matter to numerous prescribed burns across the region. IEM is the archive, not the official system of record.
NWS issues Air Quality Alert for the Midlands
Contemporaneous reporting says the National Weather Service issued a Midlands alert because smoke and particulate levels had increased, corroborating degraded particulate conditions in Columbia.
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.