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Over the past few years, there have been some massive wildfires in western North America. Smoke from these fires has travelled hundreds of miles, creating major pollution problems in cities from Vancouver to San Francisco to Salt Lake. There hasn't been a single web site which makes all this easy to visualize, though. Until now.
This site aggregates the latest available information about active wildfires in the United States (and British Columbia), smoke dispersion patterns, and particulate pollution measurements - all in one convenient map! The information you see is provided by several different entities:
Air quality statistics are provided by purpleair.com. This data consists of AQI scores representing real-time PM2.5 pollution levels at various locations - this information appears in the colored circles. Smoke simulation data is provided by NOAA. This appears as a color-coded, semi-transparent background (clear indicates no smoke, blue indicates a little smoke, red indicates a lot of smoke). Information on active US wildfires is provided by the USGS. Active fires appear as fire icons. For larger fires, a magenta circle also appears around each such icon, indicating the relative size of the fire. Information on active BC wildfires is provided by the BC wildfire service. Alberta wildfire information is provided by Alberta Wildfire. Manitoba wildfire information is provided by the government of Manitoba.
If you have any questions, comments, or suggestions, please contact us at information@soboko.com.
Here is a technical article about how this site came to be.