Wildfire smoke Corroborated
Daily PM2.5 peaked at 44.6 µg/m³ near Miami across 1 covered metro home to 6.5 million people.
Counting the extra PM2.5 above each metro's typical day, this event handed the average affected resident ≈ 1.6 cigarettes. Across everyone living in the affected metros, that is the collective equivalent of ≈ 11 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 frozen evidence supports wildfire smoke as the broad cause for this time-bounded episode.
Corroborated Independent reporting agrees on the cause, with no agency determination, monitor flag, or published assessment behind it.
CBS Miami · Jun 9, 2014 corroborates
Contemporaneous reporting says lightning ignited an eastern Everglades fire, whose smoke and ash degraded air quality from Palm Beach to Miami-Dade; Miami-Dade DERM reported unhealthy-for-sensitive-groups conditions.
WLRN Public Media · Jun 9, 2014 corroborates
WLRN reported that smoke from a far-western Broward brush fire was carried over Miami-Dade and blanketed South Florida.
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
Contemporaneous reporting says lightning ignited an eastern Everglades fire, whose smoke and ash degraded air quality from Palm Beach to Miami-Dade; Miami-Dade DERM reported unhealthy-for-sensitive-groups conditions.
View supporting source ↗Air-mass movement
WLRN reported that smoke from a far-western Broward brush fire was carried over Miami-Dade and blanketed South Florida.
View transport source ↗Local response
EPA monitors recorded the event across 1 metro. The peak daily concentration is roughly 2.0 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.
Miami-Fort Lauderdale-West Palm Beach, FL
Monitor comparison window 2014-06-06 to 2014-06-12 · PM2.5 target: HOMESTEAD FIRE STATION
368% above nearby days
About the same as surrounding days
13% higher than surrounding days
368% higher than surrounding days
13% higher than surrounding days
104% higher than surrounding days
98% higher than surrounding days
19% 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
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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Miami-Fort Lauderdale-West Palm Beach, FL | 44.6 µg/m³ | 2.0 | Jun 9, 2014 | #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.
June 9, 2014: Brush Fire Brings Smoke To South Florida
WLRN reported that smoke from a far-western Broward brush fire was carried over Miami-Dade and blanketed South Florida.
Everglades Brush Fire Affects South Florida's Air Quality
Contemporaneous reporting says lightning ignited an eastern Everglades fire, whose smoke and ash degraded air quality from Palm Beach to Miami-Dade; Miami-Dade DERM reported unhealthy-for-sensitive-groups conditions.
Corroborated Independent reporting agrees on the cause, with no agency determination, monitor flag, or published assessment behind it.
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.