Dust Agency determination
Daily PM2.5 peaked at 27.2 µg/m³ near Tucson across 1 covered metro home to 1.1 million people.
Counting the extra PM2.5 above each metro's typical day, this event handed the average affected resident ≈ 1.0 cigarettes. Across everyone living in the affected metros, that is the collective equivalent of ≈ 1.0 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.
Why we think this happened
Qualified supplied evidence supports dust 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.
Arizona air-quality authority via NWS · Jun 20, 2024 corroborates
The alert explicitly forecast widespread blowing dust and locally hazardous PM10 concentrations in the Tucson area. IEM is the archive, not the official system of record.
KOLD 13 News · Invalid Date corroborates
KOLD reported that blowing dust, not New Mexico wildfire smoke, caused Tucson's June 20 haze and elevated coarse particulate matter.
kold.com · Jun 21, 2024 corroborates
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 alert explicitly forecast widespread blowing dust and locally hazardous PM10 concentrations in the Tucson area. IEM is the archive, not the official system of record.
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 1.2 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 “Dust” explanation; it does not assign the cause by itself.
Tucson, AZ
Monitor comparison window 2024-06-17 to 2024-06-23 · PM2.5 target: ORANGE GROVE
199% above nearby days
24% higher than surrounding days
160% higher than surrounding days
199% higher than surrounding days
160% higher than surrounding days
30% higher than surrounding days
13% higher than surrounding days
67% higher than surrounding days
About the same as surrounding days
About the same as surrounding days
About the same as surrounding days
About the same as surrounding days
24% 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.
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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Tucson, AZ | 27.2 µg/m³ | 1.2 | Jun 20, 2024 | #16 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.
Archived Tucson Air Quality Alert, June 20, 2024
The alert explicitly forecast widespread blowing dust and locally hazardous PM10 concentrations in the Tucson area. IEM is the archive, not the official system of record.
Dust or smoke ? Experts explain haze seen across southern Arizona on Thursday
KOLD reported that blowing dust, not New Mexico wildfire smoke, caused Tucson's June 20 haze and elevated coarse particulate matter.
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.