Mixed causes
March 14, 2025 Oklahoma and Kansas dust-and-wildfire-smoke episode
Daily PM2.5 peaked at 72.4 µg/m³ near Tulsa across 3 covered metros home to 3.2 million people. 1 metro recorded their worst day on record; 2 placed a top-ten day.
Counting the extra PM2.5 above each metro's typical day, this event handed the average affected resident ≈ 2.3 cigarettes. Across everyone living in the affected metros, that is the collective equivalent of ≈ 7.4 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
Agency and NASA evidence supports a mixed event involving transported dust and smoke from Oklahoma and eastern Kansas fires.
Sequence: Tulsa (Mar 14) → Oklahoma City (Mar 14) → Wichita (Mar 14)
Affected metros
| Metro | Peak PM2.5 | Cigarettes, whole event | Peak day | All-time standing |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Tulsa, OK | 72.4 µg/m³ | 3.3 | Mar 14, 2025 | #2 of its top days |
| Oklahoma City, OK | 59.8 µg/m³ | 2.7 | Mar 14, 2025 | Worst day on record |
| Wichita, KS | 39.2 µg/m³ | 1.8 | Mar 14, 2025 | #15 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
Official records
- NOAA Storm Events Dust Storm, KANSAS, Mar 14, 2025 "A strong cold front moved east through Northwest Kansas during the afternoon. As the cold front moved into Kansas, a wall of dust formed along the front, with the blowing dust continuing for hours afterward. As the fro…" record →
EPA AQS monitor qualifier 2
- AQS PM2.5 qualifier IJ — High Winds. EPA AQS carries an agency-submitted informational qualifier (IJ, High Winds.) on 2 PM2.5 samples in the candidate CBSA on 2025-03-14, identifying windblown or transported dust as affecting the samples. An informational qualifier is an official submitting-agency flag, not a request for exclusion or an EPA-concurred determination.
- AQS PM2.5 qualifier IJ — High Winds. EPA AQS carries an agency-submitted informational qualifier (IJ, High Winds.) on 48 PM2.5 samples in the candidate CBSA on 2025-03-14, identifying windblown or transported dust as affecting the samples. An informational qualifier is an official submitting-agency flag, not a request for exclusion or an EPA-concurred determination.
Agency and publisher pages 2
- KDHE Issues Air Quality Health Advisory due to Dust and Smoke KDHE reported that winds transported dust and smoke from Oklahoma wildfires and eastern Kansas fires into Kansas.
- Dusty Inferno Hits Oklahoma NASA documented that March 14 hurricane-force winds in Oklahoma triggered a massive dust storm and fanned fast-moving grass fires.
What remains uncertain
- The supplied evidence does not quantify the contribution from dust versus wildfire smoke.
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.