TrailSmoke · Blog
Wildfire smoke, air quality & the outdoors
Smoke events, AQI explainers, and practical guides for planning around wildfire smoke across the US and Canada.
How This Wildfire Season Compares: Acres, Fires and a Year-End Range
2026 has burned 4.0M acres across 41k fires, well above the 10-year average for this point in the calendar. 10 past seasons charted next to a year-end range for this one, by acres, fires, or acres per fire.
Read more →I Hope Life Time Races Get Smoked Out
A big race does move real money through a small town. It also runs on volunteer labor, closed county roads and search and rescue standing by, then flies the margin home to a luxury gym chain. The case for the $15 Tuesday night race, which is also the one that can move when the air goes bad.
Read more →When Does Wildfire Smoke Season End?
A typical U.S. fire year still has 10% of its acres ahead of it on today's date. Smoke season ends when the rain arrives, not when summer does, and that date is different in the Cascades, the Northern Rockies and California. Recalculated daily.
Read more →Wildfire Smoke by City: Where It Comes From and What Clears It
Smoke forecast pages for 17 US cities and 8 national parks, grouped by the mechanism that actually ends an episode. Seattle is one wind shift from clean air. Missoula is not, and that difference matters more than the reading on the monitor.
Read more →Wildfire Smoke by State: Every Forecast Page, Fire Counts & Average Fire Size
Every TrailSmoke state smoke-forecast page, listed alphabetically with what actually burns there, plus the two state-level fire statistics people mix up: how many fires a state gets versus how big they get.
Read more →When Will the Wildfire Smoke Clear? How to Read a Smoke Forecast
Smoke leaves when the weather moves it, not when the fire goes out. How to get a specific "clears by" hour for your own city, and the three patterns that decide whether it is hours or days.
Read more →A Yearly Look: How This Wildfire Season Compares — Updated Daily
2026 has burned 4.0M acres across 41k fires so far — well above the 10-year average for this point in the calendar. Where the season lands by December, and what that means for smoke where you live. Updated daily from NIFC.
Read more →July 2026 East Coast Smoke-Out: Canadian Wildfires Choke the Northeast
Record air-quality numbers from Milwaukee to New York as smoke from 850+ Canadian wildfires blankets the eastern US. What happened, why, and how to plan around it.
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