Air Quality Mapped Over Time

The effects of wildfires during August and September 2020.

The wildfires keep coming. The sky turns orange. You wake up in the morning, it stinks of smoke when you walk outside, and you know a fire must be burning somewhere.

The animation above shows estimated air quality over the past couple of months. It’s based on data from the Environmental Protection Agency, which collects data from thousands of sensors and classify air quality based on levels of particulate matter.

The EPA provides six air quality classifications: good, moderate, unhealthy for sensitive groups, unhealthy, very unhealthy, and hazardous. As fires burn, you see the map get darker red towards hazardous. White areas that appear during the animation indicate segments where not enough data was available.

Notes

Sensor data from the EPA is irregular over time and space, so the animation uses interpolation to estimate air quality levels across the country. This makes patterns over time and space more obvious but should not be treated as exact measurements for any given location.

I used R to make the maps.

I made this before the most recent Northern California fires that started on September 27, 2020. Ugh.

Become a member. Support an independent site. Make great charts.

See What You Get

Favorites

Cuisine Ingredients

What are the ingredients that make each cuisine? I looked at 40,000 recipes spanning 20 cuisines and 6,714 ingredients to see what makes food taste different.

Top Brewery Road Trip, Routed Algorithmically

There are a lot of great craft breweries in the United States, but there is only so much time. This is the computed best way to get to the top rated breweries and how to maximize the beer tasting experience. Every journey begins with a single sip.

Who is Older and Younger than You

Here’s a chart to show you how long you have until you start to feel your age.

Finding the New Age, for Your Age

You’ve probably heard the lines about how “40 is the new 30” or “30 is the new 20.” What is this based on? I tried to solve the problem using life expectancy data. Your age is the new age.