Wisconsin recorded historic levels of air pollution last week due to Canadian wildfires.
Milwaukee’s AQI, or air quality index, surpassed 600 July 16 — more than twice the hazardous threshold.
City officials urged people to limit their exposure to smoky air outside. Children, older adults, pregnant people and those with respiratory conditions were especially urged to use caution. Some city services that required workers to be outside were suspended.
The conditions prompted local resident Ryan Thompson to create a free app called "SmokeDar" that informs people about the air quality around them.
"Most weather apps will give you an air quality number...but they don't tell you how much smoke is in the air, how much is in the atmosphere, how much is down at a lower level where we breathe and our children and pets play," Thompson says. "And so, by kind of triangulating or basically using four different sources, I was able to pull together all that data in one app and make it accessible and quick to read."
Thompson told WUWM’s Teran Powell more about why he created the app.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Teran Powell: How many people have been using it so far?
Ryan Thompson: This app has definitely exploded in terms of use. It's all relative, right? I mean, like some people get millions of views and things like that. It's only got a couple thousand, but it's really good considering I made it last week.
People are just finding it and they're sharing it. I do have shared tools baked in, but it more or less is a utility. So, whether it's the AQI index that they're looking at, or, I have some gamification in there. I designed it with primarily 21 main Midwestern cities.
I love working towards making solutions for either clients or customers or just citizens of the city of Milwaukee or of the United States.
What do you you see for the future of SmokDar?
It can search a ton of Midwestern cities, Minnesota, down to Missouri, all the way over to Ohio. I really kind of built it for this region originally. I wasn't aware that smoke was going to keep traveling. I mean, it could expand as far as the data can take me.
So, I imagine it probably has some functionality in Canada. I haven't been Googling or searching their neck of the woods, but I have tried a bunch of different cities down here for testing reasons, and it works like a charm.
Any final thoughts you want to share?
I'd say one of the things that it really does, is showcase the enormity of this issue, and it's not going to go away. It's in part due to weather systems, La Niña, El Niño, certainly things like that work in cycles, but really what we're looking at is climate change. And with that, there's going to be a little bit of culture change. And, you know, we had the highest AQI reading ever in the state of Wisconsin last week — 5, 600, which is off the chart; not even designed to go that high.
Some things you can do to stay safe is a stay indoors, when the weather, when SmokeDar tells you that you should. And you should use a HEPA filter, if you're going out shopping, you know, N95 mask. A lot of this stuff, we just have to make adjustments and the summers are going to get smokier, and we just need to adjust as temperatures change and change along, and adapt as humans always have.
