One line
SmokeDar is a free smoke radar for the eight Midwest states that tells you whether wildfire smoke is over your head or in your lungs — because those are different days that look identical from your porch.
Boilerplate
Short (25 words)
SmokeDar is a free wildfire smoke and air quality radar covering eight Midwest states. It shows whether smoke is overhead or at the surface, and what is burning upwind.
Long (75 words)
SmokeDar is a free, no-signup web app covering Minnesota, Wisconsin, Michigan, Iowa, Illinois, Indiana, Ohio and Missouri. It separates two things almost every other tool blurs together: smoke in the sky above you, measured as aerosol optical depth, and smoke in the air you are actually breathing, measured as PM2.5. It includes a plan-view radar, a five-day forecast that carries heat and smoke on the same row, and a live account of the fires burning upwind. Built and given away by Ryan Thompson, a designer and developer in Milwaukee.
The person
Ryan Thompson is a designer and developer in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. He is an Eagle Scout, a father of two, a youth baseball coach and a lifelong outdoorsman. He built SmokeDar alone, in the open, and gives it away. He takes on outside work: mentiongroup.com/labs.
Story angles
The sky lies
Why an orange sky and dangerous air are not the same thing, and why most apps cannot tell you which one you have.
Heat plus smoke
The five-day forecast puts the high temperature and the worst AQI on one row. The dangerous day is the one that is both. No mainstream forecast shows them together.
Canada's fire season, from a Milwaukee porch
The smoke over the Great Lakes mostly starts hundreds of miles north. SmokeDar shows the perimeters, the acreage and the wind that connects them to you.
One person, no venture money
A free public-health tool built by a marketing agency owner in his spare time, on public data, given away.
Fast facts
| What | Detail |
|---|---|
| Coverage | Minnesota, Wisconsin, Michigan, Iowa, Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, Missouri |
| Price | Free. No signup, no ads, no data sold, no account of any kind. |
| Resolution | A fixed 616-point grid over the region, roughly 77 by 54 km, refreshed hourly |
| Forecast | Five days, with the day's high, the conditions and the worst AQI on one row |
| The distinction | Aerosol optical depth (smoke aloft) shown separately from PM2.5 and US AQI (smoke at the surface) |
| Artwork | 21 Midwest skylines drawn by hand from real building heights, including all eight state capitols |
| Accessibility | Built to WCAG 2.1 AA, with a user-controlled accommodations panel |
| Built by | Ryan Thompson, a designer and developer in Milwaukee. Free, funded by donations. |
Where the data comes from
- Air and smoke: Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Service (CAMS), served via Open-Meteo
- Weather: Open-Meteo forecast
- Canadian fires: Canadian Wildland Fire Information System, Natural Resources Canada
- US fires: National Interagency Fire Center
- Maps: CARTO, with data by OpenStreetMap contributors
All public, all free tiers, no private feeds. Anyone can check the numbers.
What SmokeDar does not claim
Please carry this line into the piece. SmokeDar is not a health barometer and not a medical device. It indicates general risk and is meant to be interesting to look at. Anyone with a real concern should consult a doctor or their local health department, and AirNow is the EPA's official source of record for US air quality.
The rest of the honest part:
- Smoke aloft is modelled, not photographed. It is a forecast product, not a satellite image.
- The grid is about 77 km across. It cannot see a single fire, a street, or your block.
- It cannot measure how fast a plume is moving. At this resolution the field changes strength in place faster than it visibly travels, so any speed figure would be invented. Timing comes from the forecast.
- It shows what is burning upwind. That is not proof a specific haze came from a specific fire; proving that needs back-trajectory modelling, which SmokeDar does not do.
Assets
- App icon: 512px PNG · SVG
- Social card: 1200×630 PNG
- Screenshots: the app makes its own. Open SmokeDar, press Save this sky, and it exports a 1200×630 card of the current sky over any city, ready to print.
- Live site: smokedar.com
Contact
Ryan Thompson, creator of SmokeDar, designer and developer
[email protected]
Milwaukee, Wisconsin · mentiongroup.com/labs
Happy to talk on the record, on deadline, or on background. I can also pull the numbers for your specific city or date if that helps the piece.