terriko

Here at Casa Sibyllea, we're using a few online tools to navigate The Smog.

Most useful so far has been https://firesmoke.ca/forecasts/current which is an animated map of the continent that shows an hourly prediction of where the smoke will actually be when for the next day or two. We've been using this to time when to open up the windows to get fresh air. This has the advantage of not being American and thus not being subject to the vicissitudes of the US federal government.

Also modestly helpful has been Google Maps, which has a view for air quality and a separate view specific for wildfires. These are under the "Layers" tool (position depends on the platform you're using), and you might have to click the "More" option. Here's screenshots the desktop (Mac + Firefox) and Android app UIs with the Layers tools indicated. They are not predictive, they only show the present or recent past (which is unclear – these would be much more helpful if they had datetime information attached, so the user could tell how fresh it was). In air quality view, you have to click a specific location to get an actual air quality number. Widefire view also shows the rough perimeters of smoke clouds.

Over on https://fire.airnow.gov, you can see a map that has regional textual forecasts and alerts, like a weather report for smoke, and dots that correspond to actual air quality sensors, so you can see where precisely the data is coming from near you. The dots are color-coded to how bad the air quality they are reporting is, so you can see at a glance how the whole map is; when you click on a sensor location, it gives you that sensor's (presumably current) particulate reading (PM2.5), a trend indicator, and a little graph of recent readings. Down in the right lower corner, it tells you how recently the page was refreshed, which is a good thing, but that's not the same as how recently the sensors updated. (I have my own domestic sensor hardware, and have become very aware that the online data they share is not necessarily very fresh; today my air filter started alerting, but the linked app didn't show there was an issue until a half hour later.) I just recently checked this out, so I don't know how useful it will be for me, but looks promising.

AccuWeather, like firesmoke.ca, has an animated forecast map. I can't figure out how to nagivate to it directly in AccuWeather for a specific location – the "air quality" tab only has static images. I found Boston's by Google searching "smoke map today" and letting it geolocate me. You can start there and navigate to wherever. It seems to cover much but not all of North America; it goes as far north as Saskatoon, and it's not clear how far south it goes. This is also new to me, but looks very promising because it's specifically a map of "near surface smoke", as opposed to merely satellite-visible smoke plumes. Intriguingly, it seems to be reporting something other than just particulate matter: it's units are "µg/m3" which it describes as "micrograms of gaseous pollutant per cubic meter of ambient air".

ETA: h/t graydon, this fascinating mashup map at earth.nullschool.net, configured to show "Wind @ Surface + Sulfate Extinction (Aerosol Optical Thickness, 550 nm)". Not sure what "sulfate extinction" means here, but the info shows it refers in some sense to SO4, sulfate ions. Nullschool Earth's main page says, "a visualization of global weather conditions forecast by supercomputers updated every three hours".

This is a rumor, but a pretty good one run in the Washington Post:

2026 Jul 16 5:06 pm EDT: WaPo: "Lettuce supplier identified as potential source of cyclosporiasis outbreak":

The CDC has linked the Taylor Farms produce supplied to Taco Bell to the outbreak of the parasitic illness, according to two persons familiar with the investigation.

Investigators have identified shredded iceberg lettuce supplied to Taco Bell restaurants by Taylor Farms as a potential source of contamination in the outbreak of a parasitic illness that has sickened thousands in the United States, according to two individuals familiar with the investigation.

The two spoke on the condition of anonymity to share details of the ongoing investigation.

Officials from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said this week that they have identified a likely link among cyclosporiasis cases in four states — Michigan, Ohio, West Virginia and Kentucky — marking the agency’s clearest public indication yet that many of the illnesses are connected to a common source. A top official from the Food and Drug Administration said earlier this week that its investigation involves multiple produce items, including lettuce.

“The signal we have gotten is that there is a very high percentage of people who got sick at Taco Bell, and when investigators asked what their menu items were in common, lettuce came up frequently,” said one of the individuals. When the FDA asked the company where they sourced the lettuce from, it was Taylor Farms, not just for the Taco Bell stores in Michigan but also for restaurants in the three other states, the person said.

The r/ContagionCuriosity thread has people identifying other brand names owned and operated by Taylor Farms.