City of Fort Myers · Dec 1, 2025 hypothesis
Downtown New Year's Eve Celebration
The City of Fort Myers advertised a midnight fireworks display immediately preceding the January 1 event.
Fireworks Likely
2026-01-01 Cape Coral-Fort Myers, FL and Tampa-St. Petersburg-Clearwater, FL fireworks episode
Daily PM2.5 peaked at 57.8 µg/m³ near Tampa across 2 covered metros home to 4.3 million 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 ≈ 8.3 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
The basis for “Fireworks”
An official Fort Myers display record and exact-date Tampa Bay community reports independently document extensive fireworks and lingering smoke; combined with the versioned holiday rule, they support a likely fireworks attribution across both metros.
Likely Applicable reporting or a supported inference makes this the best current causal explanation.
Reddit r/StPetersburgFL · Jan 1, 2026 hypothesis
Why is the AQI so bad today?
Multiple Tampa Bay residents reported extensive overnight fireworks, heavy lingering smoke, and poor air on New Year's Day; several described smoke spreading through St. Petersburg, Clearwater, Tampa, and nearby neighborhoods.
Inference, not direct attribution
Holiday timing: The event falls in the July 3–5 or December 31–January 1 fireworks window. That makes fireworks a reasonable hypothesis, but no retained source directly attributes this event.
See every retained source and limitation ↓
Sequence: Tampa (Jan 1) → Cape Coral (Jan 1)
Evidence path
From source to city
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.
- 1Inferred
Source or mechanism
Pattern-based explanation
Holiday timing. The event falls in the July 3–5 or December 31–January 1 fireworks window. That makes fireworks a reasonable hypothesis, but no retained source directly attributes this event.
- 2Research gap
Air-mass movement
The transport path has not been reconstructed
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.
- 3Documented
Local response
57.8 µg/m³ near Tampa
EPA monitors recorded the event across 2 metros. The peak daily concentration is roughly 2.6 cigarette-equivalents at the outdoor daily rate.
Inspect the pollutant and weather signals ↓
Event autopsy
What the instruments saw
Before, during, and after the episode: nearby pollutant monitors and surface-weather stations show what changed. This context tests the “Fireworks” explanation; it does not assign the cause by itself.
Cape Coral-Fort Myers, FL
Monitor comparison window 2025-12-29 to 2026-01-04 · PM2.5 target: Winkler Pump Station
370% above nearby days
200% higher than surrounding days
Pollution fingerprint
Metro-wide median of reporting monitors PM2.5 23.3 µg/m³
370% higher than surrounding days
Before6 µg/m³ Event23.3 µg/m³ After3.93 µg/m³
PM10 30 µg/m³
200% higher than surrounding days
Before11.5 µg/m³ Event30 µg/m³ After8.50 µg/m³
Ozone 0.039 ppm
10% higher than surrounding days
Before0.035 ppm Event0.039 ppm After0.030 ppm
Tampa-St. Petersburg-Clearwater, FL
Monitor comparison window 2025-12-29 to 2026-01-04 · PM2.5 target: Clearwater
599% above nearby days
29% lower than surrounding days
273% higher than surrounding days
Pollution fingerprint
Metro-wide median of reporting monitors PM2.5 34.5 µg/m³
599% higher than surrounding days
Before4.78 µg/m³ Event34.5 µg/m³ After4.93 µg/m³
PM10 41 µg/m³
273% higher than surrounding days
Before11 µg/m³ Event41 µg/m³ After8.50 µg/m³
Carbon monoxide 0.496 ppm
120% higher than surrounding days
Before0.164 ppm Event0.496 ppm After0.227 ppm
Nitrogen dioxide 11 ppb
79% higher than surrounding days
Before5.71 ppb Event11 ppb After6.47 ppb
Sulfur dioxide 1.55 ppb
15% higher than surrounding days
Before1.40 ppb Event1.55 ppb After1.34 ppb
Ozone 0.028 ppm
14% lower than surrounding days
Before0.033 ppm Event0.028 ppm After0.029 ppm
Atmospheric conditions
Nearby EPA weather observations12% lower than surrounding days
About the same as surrounding days
12% lower than surrounding days
29% lower 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.
Measured daily PM2.5 at EPA monitors, as cigarette-equivalents
EPA monitors sit in metro areas, so the colour clusters there. Land between and beyond
them is unmeasured, not clean: this map shows where IAQng has readings, not the extent
of the smoke.
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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
Camera views near
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.
Affected metros
| Metro | Peak PM2.5 | Cigarettes, whole event | Peak day | All-time standing |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Tampa-St. Petersburg-Clearwater, FL | 57.8 µg/m³ | 2.6 | Jan 1, 2026 | #6 of its top days |
| Cape Coral-Fort Myers, FL | 23.5 µg/m³ | 1.1 | Jan 1, 2026 | #14 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
What supports this account
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.
Downtown New Year's Eve Celebration
City of Fort Myers
The City of Fort Myers advertised a midnight fireworks display immediately preceding the January 1 event.
What it supports
This source supports a possible mechanism or occurrence; it does not establish the cause by itself.
Limit
The occurrence is documented for Fort Myers and does not establish the Tampa source or measured PM2.5 contribution.
Why is the AQI so bad today?
Reddit r/StPetersburgFL
Multiple Tampa Bay residents reported extensive overnight fireworks, heavy lingering smoke, and poor air on New Year's Day; several described smoke spreading through St. Petersburg, Clearwater, Tampa, and nearby neighborhoods.
What it supports
This source supports a possible mechanism or occurrence; it does not establish the cause by itself.
Limit
Community observations document local fireworks and smoke but do not directly measure their contribution at the regulatory monitor.
Holiday timing pattern
IAQng deterministic inference policy
The event peak falls on 2026-01-01 and the event lasts no more than two days. Under holiday_fireworks_possible.v1, that timing is consistent with a possible fireworks contribution.
What it supports
A possible fireworks contribution; this is a reproducible inference, not direct occurrence or causal evidence.
Limit
Pre-event and post-event temporal-shape data were not supplied.
What remains uncertain
- The Tampa evidence is community reporting rather than an official causal determination, and no source-apportionment measurement separates fireworks from other combustion sources.
Status and provenance
Likely Applicable reporting or a supported inference makes this the best current causal explanation.
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.