Modeled smokeNow
Eight states. Every sky.
Your sky right now
Smoke over the Midwest
Reading the air…
—AQI
Watch your sky moveNow
Up there
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Down here
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What happens next
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General risk, not medical advice. What that means
Next five days
Heat and smoke, on the same row
low to high worst AQI expected that day The day to watch is the one that is hot and smoky.
The Sky Log
Collect the Midwest
0/21skylines
1day streak
0/9badges
Right now across the eight states
Who has the cleanest air?
—your rank
Cleanest
Smokiest
Why this is happening
Something is burning upwind
—hectares burning upwind
—active fire perimeters
—fresh detections, last 24h
—longest burning since
Counting what is on fire upwind. The Canadian fire service takes a few seconds.
Biggest fires upwind of you
- Waiting on the Canadian fire service…
Largest fires in the United States
- Waiting on NIFC…
What this does and does not say. These are the fires burning upwind of you right now, with the area they have already burned. It is not proof that this exact haze came from that exact fire. Proving that needs back-trajectory modelling, which SmokeDar does not do. What it does show is the cause behind the pattern: when this much land is alight upwind and the wind points at you, the sky goes orange.
Canadian perimeters and hotspots from the Canadian Wildland Fire Information System (Natural Resources Canada). US incidents from NIFC. Both free and public.
Still being built
Know when SmokeDar gets better
This is new and it is going to change. Leave your email and I will tell you when something worth knowing lands: more cities drawn by hand, sharper data, whatever you ask for next.
- Once a month at the very most, and only when there is something to say
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It stays free if you help out
There is nothing to sell here and nobody paying for your attention, so the thing that keeps SmokeDar running is people chipping in. If it ever told you something worth knowing, like whether Saturday's game should move, consider a donation. A coffee genuinely covers a month of it.
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Starting up…
The sky, the sun and the smoke are all drawn from live readings.
SmokeDar covers Minnesota, Wisconsin, Michigan, Iowa, Illinois, Indiana, Ohio and Missouri, on one 616-point grid refreshed hourly.
Smoke radar
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Return strengthlight → very heavy
Sweep forwardNow
Strongest return
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Scanning…
Wind at the surface
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Is it coming here?
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How to read this
You are at the centre, rings are distance, and the needle sweeps clockwise from north, painting smoke as it passes. Hover anywhere to read that spot. Tilt switches between the smoke aloft and the air at the surface, the way a real radar switches elevation.
What this is not. There is no beam. This is the modelled CAMS field in plan view, on a grid about 77 km across, so it cannot see a single fire or a street. It also cannot measure how fast the plume travels: at this resolution the field changes strength in place faster than it visibly moves, so any speed here would be invented. Timing comes from the hourly forecast instead.