HiveAir Utah

The air we all share. A calm, plain-language air quality and pollen site for the Wasatch Front (Salt Lake, Davis, Utah and Weber counties, plus Cache, Box Elder, Tooele and Wasatch), at hiveairutah.com. Sister site to Prepare Utah (household readiness) and FaultLine Utah (earthquake hazards by address).

• Home (index.html): a newspaper front page, built every 30 minutes from Utah DAQ and EPA AirNow. A headline and deck say how the air is in the four core counties. Under them, a lead (the highest current reading, today's forecast and burn levels, which counties are on watch, and what to do at today's worst level), then a column per county (AQI now, AQI by pollutant, the past 24 hours, 3-day health forecast, burn level, smoke and dust alerts). A rail down the right holds the hand-typed Hive Status line and the four guides.
• Air (air.html): the AQI in six colors, health level versus action (burn) level, the burn rules, monitors versus sensors versus models, and which forecast covers each county.
• Seasons (seasons.html): winter inversions, summer ozone, wildfire smoke, Great Salt Lake dust, who breathes the worst air, what Utah is doing, and common questions written the way people search.
• Pollen (pollen.html): the pollen calendar, local plants, how to read a count, where to find a real one, and when to get care.
• Breathe (breathe.html): what to do at each level, a clean-air room, filters, masks, timing, schools, and when to get care.
• About (about.html): a short note on who makes the site, where the numbers come from, and privacy.

It's a plain static site: HTML, CSS and a little JavaScript. One Python script turns three public feeds into a small site/data/air.json. Visitors' browsers load only this site: no accounts, cookies, analytics, outside fonts, or calls to the agencies.

HiveAir Utah is for education only. It is not medical advice, not an official alert, and not affiliated with Utah DEQ, EPA, AirNow, the National Weather Service, AAAAI, or any government agency.

Called HiveWatch Utah until Oct 29, 2026, when the project folder became Websites/HiveAir. The site moved from hivewatchutah.com to hiveairutah.com on Oct 30, 2026, and the GitHub repo (formerly hivewatchutah) and Git database were renamed to match.

The first version (Oct 22, 2026, the first commit) was a scanner and tip-routing site. That content has since moved out of this project.

Folders

site/                     ← the website; this folder is what gets published
  *.html                  one file per page, edited by hand
  assets/css/style.css    all styling (every color is at the top), plus print styles
  assets/js/air.js        the home page's live front page; reads data/air.json and nothing else
  assets/js/common.js     mobile menu
  assets/favicon.svg
  assets/img/share.png    link-preview image, drawn by scripts/make_images.swift
  data/air.json           built by scripts/fetch_data.py (not committed)
  sitemap.xml, robots.txt, _headers
scripts/
  fetch_data.py           builds site/data/air.json from Utah DAQ, AirNow and NWS
  serve.py                local preview server
  make_images.swift       draws site/assets/img/share.png
.github/workflows/
  pages.yml               fetches data and publishes site/ on every push and every 30 minutes
  keepalive.yml           weekly; keeps GitHub from switching its backup schedule off

Preview it on this Mac

python3 scripts/fetch_data.py

python3 scripts/serve.py

Then open http://localhost:8739. Press Ctrl+C in the terminal to stop it. (FaultLine Utah uses port 8737 and Prepare Utah 8738, so they can all run at once.) Run fetch_data.py again whenever you want fresh numbers; without it the front page says the readings didn't load.

Unknown addresses show the browser's plain "File not found" locally. GitHub Pages serves site/404.html instead; its links start with / so it works at any depth.

Change the words

There is no build step for the pages: edit the HTML file and reload.

What	Where
Hive Status line	site/index.html (see below)
Guide pages	site/air.html, seasons.html, pollen.html, breathe.html
Pollen calendar	the <table class="cal"> in site/pollen.html; each month cell's data-lvl is 0 (none), 1 (some), 2 (in season) or 3 (peak)
Burn-day wording in the county columns	burnLine() in site/assets/js/air.js
When the shimmer marker shows, and its "Watch:" words	watchReasons() in site/assets/js/air.js
The front page's headline and deck	frontHeadline() in site/assets/js/air.js
The lead under them	frontSummary() in site/assets/js/air.js
The what-to-do tips in the lead	TIPS in site/assets/js/air.js, copied from the level cards in site/breathe.html#levels; change both together
Which counties get columns, and their notes	COUNTIES in scripts/fetch_data.py
Header menu and footer	repeated in every site/*.html file; change all seven together. The home page has its own nameplate above the same menu
Who makes this, data sources, privacy	site/about.html
Link-preview image	scripts/make_images.swift; run swift scripts/make_images.swift from the project root
The front page's layout and type sizes	the rules under .paper in site/assets/css/style.css; the other pages don't use them

Each guide cites its sources next to the claim (the small rounded links) and ends with "Checked [date]". When you re-check a page, update that date.

When style.css or a .js file changes after launch, bump the ?v= date on its <link>/<script> tags in every page so browsers fetch the new file. A second change on the same day needs a suffix (?v=2026-10-29b).

Update the Hive Status line

The live columns cover the AQI and burn levels. The Hive Status line is the desk's hand-typed note on what they don't: pollen season, smoke on its way, a long inversion coming. Nothing fetches it.

1. Open site/index.html and find id="hive-status".

2. Replace the text inside <p class="status-line">, keeping the shape and the middle dots:

   As of [time] · [quiet|watch] · [one dry sentence] · Source: […]

3. Set data-level on that paragraph to the same word: quiet (sage edge: nothing to plan around) or watch (honey edge: one thing worth planning around; still not an alert). An unknown word leaves the edge gray.

4. One sentence. Name a source; if you can't, leave the line alone. Don't add a third level: anyone having trouble breathing should call 911, and every page says so.

5. Commit and push.

How the live data works

scripts/fetch_data.py (Python standard library only) reads:

Feed	What it gives	Notes
Utah DAQ forecast CSV	3-day health level and action (burn) level per county	The authority on burn days. Only good/unrestricted had been seen when this was written (Oct 24, 2026); other words come from DAQ's legend. Any unexpected word is shown as received with a link to DAQ.
AirNow reportingarea.dat	Current NowCast AQI per reporting area	Shown unchanged. "Salt Lake City" is the worst of eight Salt Lake and Davis monitors; Ogden is Harrisville; Provo is Lindon and Spanish Fork; no area covers Wasatch or Summit.
NWS active alerts	Air Quality Alert, Air Stagnation, Dense Smoke, Blowing Dust and Dust Storm alerts	Filtered to the counties above plus Summit and Morgan.

GitHub Actions runs it (pages.yml) and publishes the result with the site. cron-job.org starts that run every 30 minutes; see The 30-minute trigger under Publishing.

• If one feed is down, that part of the last published air.json is reused, and the page says which source is older. Forecast days and alerts that have already passed are dropped, never carried forward.
• If DAQ is down (or leaves a county out), a column falls back to AirNow's forecast, which has health levels but no burn level, and says so in the column.
• If both DAQ and AirNow are down on any run except a push, nothing is published and the previous site stays live. GitHub emails you about the failed run. A push always publishes.
• If the DAQ or AirNow data is more than 3 hours old (data_at in the file), the page shows a "these numbers are N hours old" warning and points to air.utah.gov. A single reading older than 3 hours is dimmed. A tab left open refreshes itself every 15 minutes.
• Repeated DAQ rows for one county and day are merged, keeping the worse level. Unreadable AirNow rows are skipped, not fatal.
• GitHub turns off scheduled workflows in public repos after 60 days without a commit. keepalive.yml re-enables them weekly. If the warning ever appears and stays, check the cron-job.org job first (its token may have expired), then the repo's Actions tab, where Deploy site may need re-enabling.
• A county's column gets the shimmer marker (a gold hexagon whose rings ripple out, after giant honey bees' shimmering) and a "Watch:" line when its county has something to plan around today: AQI now or today's forecast at Unhealthy for Sensitive Groups or worse, a Voluntary or Mandatory action day under the state rule, or an NWS air alert in effect for that county (matched by SAME code). Old readings and unknown words don't trigger it. Alerts in effect get the marker too. The ripple runs twice and stops within 5 seconds, and stays still for anyone who has reduced motion turned on.
• Each column keeps its county's AirNow readings for the past 24 hours in history (from the previous air.json plus the new reading), shown as a strip of hourly columns in the AQI colors with a hairline at 100. The strip fills in over the first day after a fresh start, and needs at least two readings to show.
• Pollen has no live data. The only active certified counter (AAAAI National Allergy Bureau, Intermountain's Riverton station) forbids reuse without written permission, so the site links to it.

AirNow's Data Exchange Guidelines ask for credit (in every footer), "preliminary" labels (on the home page and footer), official AQI colors (in style.css, not themed), unaltered values, and notice to AirNow and the state agency. See the to-do list.

Colors

The dark night palette (blue-black ground, cream type, honey accents) and every other color are variables in the :root block at the top of site/assets/css/style.css. Two sets are fixed on purpose:

• AQI colors (--aqi-*) are EPA's official values, which AirNow asks sites to use unchanged.
• Pollen calendar (--pollen-1 to --pollen-3) is one honey hue from dim to bright, checked as an ordered scale against the card color. Each cell also carries text for screen readers.

Text meets WCAG AA contrast on the dark background. Printing switches to a light palette.

Publishing (GitHub Pages)

Set up the same way as FaultLine Utah and Prepare Utah. The code lives at https://github.com/prepareutah/hiveairutah (public). Every push to main republishes the site, and so does the data refresh every 30 minutes. Watch deploys under the repo's Actions tab.

git add -A
git commit -m "Describe the change"
git push

The 30-minute trigger. GitHub's own schedule isn't reliable enough here: in late October 2026 the 20,50 * * * * schedule in pages.yml ran only every 4 to 7 hours, long enough to set off the site's old-data warning. It stays as a backup, and a free cron-job.org job does the timing by asking GitHub to start Deploy site:

Setting	Value
URL	https://api.github.com/repos/prepareutah/hiveairutah/actions/workflows/pages.yml/dispatches
Schedule	Every 30 minutes
Method	POST
Headers	Authorization: Bearer <token>, Accept: application/vnd.github+json, X-GitHub-Api-Version: 2022-11-28, Content-Type: application/json
Body	{"ref":"main"}

A good request returns 204. The token is a fine-grained personal access token limited to this one repo with Actions: write, which can start runs but can't change code. It lives only in the cron-job.org job, never in this repo. To replace it, make a new one, choose Only select repositories and this repo, and paste it into the job's Authorization header. If the repo is ever renamed, update the job's URL too. AirNow publishes new readings hourly, so a new reading reaches the site within about 30 minutes of its release; the readings themselves stay hourly.

Git and iCloud. This folder is in iCloud Drive, which corrupts Git's internal files if it syncs them. So Git's database lives outside iCloud at ~/.git-repos/hiveairutah.git, and the .git here is a one-line pointer to it. On another computer, clone from GitHub instead of opening this iCloud folder. iCloud conflict copies (file 2.html) are kept out of commits by .gitignore and are safe to delete.

Domain. hiveairutah.com is registered at GoDaddy. Its DNS points at GitHub Pages (set Oct 30, 2026), with the default parked A records removed:

Type	Name	Value
A	@	185.199.108.153
A	@	185.199.109.153
A	@	185.199.110.153
A	@	185.199.111.153
CNAME	www	prepareutah.github.io

The repo's Settings → Pages has Source set to GitHub Actions, hiveairutah.com as the custom domain, and Enforce HTTPS on. The Let's Encrypt certificate covers hiveairutah.com and www.hiveairutah.com and renews automatically. If a certificate doesn't start on its own after a DNS change, removing the custom domain and adding it back gets it issued at once, as with FaultLine and this site's first domain. Do the same if DNS ever changes and the certificate stalls.

To-do before public launch

Accounts and setup

• Register hiveairutah.com (GoDaddy).
• Create the GitHub repo, push, and turn on GitHub Pages with the custom domain (Oct 27, 2026).
• Point GoDaddy DNS at GitHub Pages (table above), then turn on Enforce HTTPS (Oct 27, 2026).
• Move the site from hivewatchutah.com to hiveairutah.com (Oct 30, 2026). hivewatchutah.com is no longer this site's; it's free for another project.
• Rename the GitHub repo and Git database to hiveairutah (Oct 30, 2026).
• Set up the cron-job.org trigger (Oct 30, 2026). Its token expires about Oct 31, 2027; make a new one before then (see The 30-minute trigger).
• Set up a contact mailbox (for example [email protected]). Add it to About and to USER_AGENT in scripts/fetch_data.py (NWS asks API users for contact details).
• AirNow: register a free AirNow API account (its fact sheet says one is required, even for the files this site reads), sign and return the Data Exchange Guidelines form to [email protected], and tell Utah DAQ the site uses its data.
• Optional: ask AAAAI ([email protected]) and Intermountain's Southridge allergy clinic for written permission to show the Riverton pollen counts with credit.
• Ask Prepare Utah and FaultLine Utah to link here (footers, and Prepare Utah's air guide, which doesn't cover pollen).

Content

• Replace the placeholder founder note on About with a short neutral note (Oct 28, 2026). A first-person note can replace it later; keep personal names out.
• A share image (og:image) for links posted on social media (Oct 28, 2026).
• Spanish, human-translated: about 10% of Utahns speak Spanish at home, and almost no Utah air source offers it. Start with the front page, the level-by-level actions and the pollen basics.
• Watch the first winter: confirm DAQ's forecast feed uses the health and action words the script expects (it keeps unknown words as received).

Re-check on a schedule (each guide shows its "Checked" date)

• January: inversion season, the Great Salt Lake level.
• February–March: the Legislature (air bills), and the pollen calendar as trees start.
• June–July: EPA AirData refresh, UCAIR grants.
• Whenever EPA acts: the Northern Wasatch Front ozone classification (repeal proposed Apr 30, 2026) and the PM2.5 standard (upheld in court Jun 26, 2026; further appeals possible).

Review

• Clinician (allergist or pulmonologist): the medical wording listed below.
• Utah DAQ or an air-quality scientist: the Air and Seasons pages, the burn-day wording in air.js, and the questions below.
• Lawyer: disclaimer, privacy section, and the data-use terms (Utah.gov, AirNow, NWS).

For the clinician. All of it paraphrases EPA, AirNow, CDC, NHLBI, AAAAI, ACAAI, Utah DHHS, University of Utah Health or Intermountain Health, but none of it has had a clinician's eye:

• Breathe: the "Everyone" and "Sensitive groups" lines on the six level cards; the sensitive-group lists; the whole Masks section (N95/P100 fit, ear-loop and surgical masks, heat risk, children 2 and older, ask first with heart or lung disease or pregnancy); the recess "sensitive" list; When to get care, including the 911 lines for asthma, a young child, heart attack and stroke. NHLBI's asthma page contradicts itself (911 at the top, "call your provider" in a later list); the page uses the 911 line.
• Pollen: masks for yard work; starting medicine about a month before the season (Intermountain); HEPA cleaners "may help"; when to see an allergist; the 911 lines; the epinephrine line for oral allergy syndrome; thunderstorm asthma in people without diagnosed asthma; "mild symptoms at around 10 to 20 grains per cubic meter."
• Seasons and Air: the ozone symptom list, the sensitive groups for ozone and particles, and the lake-dust and air-toxics health findings (framed as research results, not exposure measurements).

Questions for Utah DAQ (the fact-checkers found these unresolved on Oct 24, 2026):

• Box Elder: its forecast page says DAQ "does not forecast for Box Elder at this time," but the forecast feed (and AirNow) carry Box Elder days. Which is right? The column says both until DAQ answers.
• The burn rule's area in Utah County: DEQ's page says west of the Wasatch; the rule text says the whole county. And is the exemption for sources above 7,000 feet still in force? (The rule text was read from Cornell's mirror, which shows amendments through 2017; the official eRules page didn't load.)
• Fines: DEQ's page says up to $150; a 2018 DEQ release says $150 for a first violation and up to $299 a day.
• Which Severity and Action words the forecast feed uses besides good and unrestricted, and what an action level means for Wasatch County, which is outside R307-302.
• Salt Lake County (its health department, not DAQ): is March 1 itself inside the November 1 to March 1 rule? isWinter() in air.js stops at the end of February, so on March 1 the page drops the county's stricter voluntary-day sentence.

Disclaimer

For education only. Not medical advice and not an official alert or forecast. Air data from the Utah DEQ Division of Air Quality and U.S. EPA AirNow, preliminary and not quality assured. Trouble breathing? Call 911.