Wildfire smoke Possible
Daily PM2.5 peaked at 34.2 µg/m³ near Orlando across 1 covered metro home to 2.9 million people.
Counting the extra PM2.5 above each metro's typical day, this event handed the average affected resident ≈ 1.2 cigarettes. Across everyone living in the affected metros, that is the collective equivalent of ≈ 3.6 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
Orlando airport reported smoke for two hours during the PM2.5 event. The independent FPA-FOD inventory records an exact-date wildfire only 8.5 miles away plus four other same-day fires within 50 miles. This supports wildfire smoke as possible, not proven, because the inventory does not document plume movement or PM2.5 contribution.
Possible This is a transparent hypothesis supported by limited evidence or an explicit inference, not a definitive attribution.
USDA Forest Service Rocky Mountain Research Station hypothesis
FPA-FOD records five wildfires discovered within 50 miles of Orlando on August 21, including an 8-acre Orange County fire 8.5 miles from the surface station attributed to railroad operations and four smaller Florida fires.
NOAA/NWS surface observations via Iowa Environmental Mesonet · Aug 21, 2000 hypothesis
ORLANDO/HERNDON, 6.3 km from the PM2.5 target monitor, reported the official present-weather code FU (smoke) during 2 observed hours inside the catalog event window.
Inference, not direct attribution
surface_smoke_plus_bounded_fire_occurrences_possible.v1: This inference is recorded in the catalog methodology.
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
surface_smoke_plus_bounded_fire_occurrences_possible.v1. This inference is recorded in the catalog methodology.
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 1.6 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 “Wildfire smoke” explanation; it does not assign the cause by itself.
Orlando-Kissimmee-Sanford, FL
Monitor comparison window 2000-08-18 to 2000-08-24 · PM2.5 target: WINTER PARK
174% above nearby days
16% higher than surrounding days
174% higher than surrounding days
16% higher than surrounding days
40% higher than surrounding days
About the same as surrounding days
11% higher than surrounding days
About the same as 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.
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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Orlando-Kissimmee-Sanford, FL | 34.2 µg/m³ | 1.6 | Aug 21, 2000 | #18 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.
NOAA/NWS surface observations via Iowa Environmental Mesonet
ORLANDO/HERNDON, 6.3 km from the PM2.5 target monitor, reported the official present-weather code FU (smoke) during 2 observed hours inside the catalog event window.
This source supports a possible mechanism or occurrence; it does not establish the cause by itself.
The surface code establishes smoke at the nearby airport; it does not identify whether the source was a wildfire, prescribed burn, agricultural fire, or another local fire.
USDA Forest Service Rocky Mountain Research Station
FPA-FOD records five wildfires discovered within 50 miles of Orlando on August 21, including an 8-acre Orange County fire 8.5 miles from the surface station attributed to railroad operations and four smaller Florida fires.
This source supports a possible mechanism or occurrence; it does not establish the cause by itself.
FPA-FOD is a fire-occurrence inventory, not a smoke-transport or PM2.5 source-apportionment product.
Possible This is a transparent hypothesis supported by limited evidence or an explicit inference, not a definitive attribution.
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.