Utica’s Air Quality is Hazardous?

This morning, my partner reported that Utica’s air quality was really. I checked the Real-time Air Quality Index (World Air Quality Index) and could verify that the station in Utica was signaling “very unhealthy” conditions.

You can see that Utica stands out alone as very unhealthy.

Utica Air Quality is 243 (very unhealthy)

Whereas our initial idea was “wow the fires in California have already drifted that far? Over 5000km? Is that even possible?”, you can see that no-one else between California and Utica is similarly affected. It’s not smoke. If you look at LA, you can see that there isn’t even anywhere nearly as bad as Utica was showing this morning. You’d have to look in the work spots of India to find similarly bad readings, where I found readings in the 800s in some places.

The details shows that it started happening very suddenly at about 18:00 the previous evening. Either something happened—industrial accident?—or this is when the sensor stopped working properly.

Details of Utica Air Quality is 243 (very unhealthy)

Later in the day, it’s being reported that its an iPhone Weather App Glitch: No Hazardous Air Quality Over CNY (WKTV News). Whereas they do well to point out that the winds in LA are actually blowing in the other direction, It’s a bit odd that they write that “Official air quality reports from around Utica and CNY show air quality at a healthy and normal level.” That’s simply not true, as the source I’ve cited above was showing very unhealthy levels and is now shows levels twice as high as that that are hazardous.

Utica Air Quality is now 395 (hazardous)

It’s been quite consistent for about seven hours now. And you can see that the rest of the US is more or less normal.

Whole USA shows it's just Utica

Again, even LA is showing much better air quality than Utica right now. You’d have to look at the most highly industrial zones in China and India to find anything as bad or exceeding Utica’s reported level right now.