Your go-to wildfire smoke and safety app.

SmokeDar: wildfire smoke radar and air quality for the Midwest

Your air right now

Milwaukee, Wisconsin

Your air right now
–AQI
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Reading the air…

Official AQI at AirNow →

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 to do · What that means

The Sky Log

Collect the Midwest

0/21skylines
1day streak
–worst AQI seen
0/9badges

    Next five days · Milwaukee, Wisconsin

    Heat and smoke, on the same row

    low to high worst AQI expected, model forecast The day to watch is the one that is hot and smoky.

    Your sky right now

    Milwaukee, Wisconsin

    Watch your sky moveNow

    Why this is happening

    Something is burning upwind

    –acres 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

    Largest fires in the United States

    1. 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 modeling, 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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    • One click to leave, and the link is in every message

    I will note that you signed up from the Midwest, so I can tell you when your city gets its skyline. Nothing else is collected.

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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 a computer estimate (CAMS), refreshed hourly.
    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 center, 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 modeled 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.

    Estimated smokeNow
    hover to peek · click to move · space to play
    Your sky right nowMilwaukee, Wisconsin