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Comment by Diederich | Hacker News Reader

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Diederich·

Y'all might already know about them, but here are some links I've collected to monitor smoke.

https://fire.airnow.gov/

https://zoom.earth/

https://gacc.nifc.gov/nwcc/information/firemap.aspx

https://firms.modaps.eosdis.nasa.gov/map/#t:adv;d:2020-09-10...

https://earth.nullschool.net/#current/particulates/surface/l...

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It is worth adding http://purpleair.com/ who produce the low cost sensors that contribute to at least the first map. They have their own map (with 80 second update intervals) and you can buy a sensor for ~$250... it is a cool product because its a super practical design (housing is a pvc pipe cap) focused on delivering an accurate sensor on the cheap.

We love ours because you can watch it and see in real time when the air quality improves for a brief period.

I found Windy absolutely indispensable during the 2019/2020 Australian wildfire season. I cycle to work and I would check Windy for pockets of clean air blowing in from the coast from the North which from me is the desert, hence no fires.

There was a point where southern, eastern and western winds all blew smoke from one major fire or another. We have air quality testing sites in various parts of the state to reference, but at a certain point you needed to forecast on a national level in order to not get caught in one smoke cloud or another.

There's also https://firesmoke.ca

In the post above the fire kml files that plot the active fire hot spots from satellites in Google earth is hard to beat: https://firms.modaps.eosdis.nasa.gov/usfs/active_fire/

You get near real time, auto refresh and very good accuracy with ability to zoom in.

Another useful site with a lot of different layers is the #FireMappers one.

https://napsg.maps.arcgis.com/apps/webappviewer/index.html?i...

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