Fireworks Recent provisional
2026-07-04 fireworks episode affecting Des Moines-West Des Moines, IA, Omaha-Council Bluffs, NE-IA, Kansas City, MO-KS
Daily PM2.5 peaked at 72.1 µg/m³ near Omaha across 3 covered metros home to 4.0 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 ≈ 2.6 cigarettes. Across everyone living in the affected metros, that is the collective equivalent of ≈ 10 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
The supplied retained evidence supports fireworks for this event; no supplied evidence establishes membership in a broader time-bounded episode.
Sequence: Omaha (Jul 4) → Des Moines (Jul 4) → Kansas City (Jul 5)
Affected metros
| Metro | Peak PM2.5 | Cigarettes, whole event | Peak day | All-time standing |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Omaha-Council Bluffs, NE-IA | 72.1 µg/m³ | 6.3 | Jul 4, 2026 | Worst day on record |
| Des Moines-West Des Moines, IA | 61.2 µg/m³ | 2.8 | Jul 4, 2026 | #4 of its top days |
| Kansas City, MO-KS | 39.8 µg/m³ | 1.8 | Jul 5, 2026 | #20 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 2
- Bo’s First Alert 6 Forecast: Bad air quality today from firework smoke, quiet days ahead The Omaha forecast attributed unhealthy July 5 air quality to lingering fireworks smoke held in place by calm winds. It corroborates the continuing Omaha portion of this July 4–5 multi-place event, but does not specifically attribute each place's peak.
- Have a great time, be considerate of others when using fireworks Iowa DNR warned before the holiday that fireworks smoke contains fine particles and can accumulate under stagnant conditions; it does not assess this specific event.
Status and provenance
Research preview: this record carries research-only status and its boundaries, cause, and name may change as evidence review completes. Recent days are preliminary AirNow readings and re-rank once EPA certifies them. Grouping policy common_sense_root_cause_grouping.v2. The cause label reflects the assembled evidence above, not an IAQng detection formula.