{"id":11872,"date":"2026-07-21T20:08:28","date_gmt":"2026-07-22T01:08:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/cherubs.medill.northwestern.edu\/2026\/?p=11872"},"modified":"2026-08-02T20:01:04","modified_gmt":"2026-08-03T01:01:04","slug":"beating-wildfire-smoke","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cherubs.medill.northwestern.edu\/2026\/07\/beating-wildfire-smoke\/","title":{"rendered":"Beating wildfire smoke"},"content":{"rendered":"

As wildfire smoke from Canada enveloped Evanston, Medill staff and cherubs helped one another stay safe and healthy.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Professor Roger Boye, the program director, routinely emailed updates on the air quality to all program members. Staff actively monitored the weather throughout the day.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Meher Sareen of London handed out pink face masks to friends to help combat the effects of the smoke as they walked to and from classes and meals.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cI always overpack, but I don’t regret overpacking the COVID masks,\u201d she said.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Many cherubs continued to struggle with the smoke throughout the day.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cMy asthma was really kicking up, and I did not have a good day because every time I went outside, I was coughing. I was really struggling,\u201d Charlie Tobin of Menlo Park, California, said.<\/span><\/p>\n

Amid the murky sky, two cherubs got creative.\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Jack Tergesen of New York, microphone in his hand, face mask around his ears, walked back from lunch to report on the unusual weather and offer advice to social media viewers on how to stay healthy: \u201cStay inside.\u201d \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Sophie Lee of Daegu, South Korea, suggested, filmed and edited the weather report. <\/span>After five minutes of editing by Lee, Tergesen posted the 45-second clip on Instagram, eliciting likes from over 120 viewers nationwide.<\/span><\/p>\n

Ethan Chan of Palo Alto, California, followed the advice alongside other cherubs.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cWalking between the dorms and classrooms was the only time we spent outside,\u201d Chan said.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Tergesen later said his weather reporting was part of fulfilling a lifelong dream.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve wanted to become a meteorologist ever since I was in the second grade,\u201d Tergesen said. \u201cI would always get in front of the camera, make my dad do it, pretend like I was on The Weather Channel.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cI think it was just a matter of being in the moment and also looking at my surroundings,\u201d Tergesen said. \u201cI would say I used some of the skills I learned in cherubs to help make that independent report.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As the summer air thickened, cherubs sprang into action.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":351,"featured_media":11296,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[14,19],"tags":[],"ppma_author":[705],"class_list":["post-11872","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-city","category-living-in-evanston"],"acf":[],"authors":[{"term_id":705,"user_id":351,"is_guest":0,"slug":"shah26","display_name":"Jayen Shah","avatar_url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/ed5c39dc129e31163e62f2884bfcc31ac155d169274d780078e9837c0df3f4bf?s=96&d=mm&r=g","author_category":"","user_url":"","last_name":"Shah","first_name":"Jayen","job_title":"","description":""}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cherubs.medill.northwestern.edu\/2026\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11872","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cherubs.medill.northwestern.edu\/2026\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cherubs.medill.northwestern.edu\/2026\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cherubs.medill.northwestern.edu\/2026\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/351"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cherubs.medill.northwestern.edu\/2026\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11872"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/cherubs.medill.northwestern.edu\/2026\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11872\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12946,"href":"https:\/\/cherubs.medill.northwestern.edu\/2026\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11872\/revisions\/12946"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cherubs.medill.northwestern.edu\/2026\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/11296"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cherubs.medill.northwestern.edu\/2026\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11872"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cherubs.medill.northwestern.edu\/2026\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11872"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cherubs.medill.northwestern.edu\/2026\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11872"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cherubs.medill.northwestern.edu\/2026\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/ppma_author?post=11872"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}