Should the fire light up in the right location, Ken Bein, an atmospheric scientist at the University of California, Davis, can deploy in just under an hour.

“I am in a state right now where my instruments are packed and loaded,” he says. “It’s just a matter of getting the truck and getting out.”

Bein is scouting for northern California fires in regions referred to as wildland-urban interface, where residential areas bleed into undeveloped wilderness. Once he finds a location, his pickup truck will haul a 28-foot flatbed trailer with two smart cars into a spot where air pollution from a wildfire hangs thick. Atop his trailer he has all the equipment he needs to sample plumes of smoke rolling off the