By Jen Christensen, CNN

(CNN) — Many millions of Americans and Canadians are breathing bad air right now due to smoke from hundreds of Canadian wildfires and additional wildfires in northern Minnesota.

If you’re in an affected area, it’s important to check air quality before you go anywhere this weekend, and keep certain items on hand to make life much more breathable when smoke is in the air.

Wildfire smoke is a dangerous mix of gases and tiny particles – including the biggest danger to human health, particle pollution called PM2.5, microscopic particles smaller than a width of a human hair that can get stuck deep in your lungs or even enter the bloodstream, leading to more health problems down the road.

Doctors are emphasizing the importance of minimizing your time in the smoke as much as possible.

How to check the air quality

Before you plan your day or go out, check AirNow.gov, says Dr. Rebecca Bascom, an attending physician who trains fellows in pulmonary and critical care medicine at Penn State.

“They do real-time monitoring, so you’re able to know where your area is at a specific time, so you have both forecasting where you can try to predict what you’re going to be up against,” she said. “Our access to information that we can use for our own health planning is so much better than it used to be.”

If AirNow.gov or your favorite weather app says the air quality is at an unhealthy red or the very unhealthy purple level, doctors recommend staying home.

“We really should be mindful that even if we don’t have any underlying lung disease, we can still have problems breathing, particularly in this environment with the wildfire smoke,” said Dr. Rubabin Tooba, a pulmonologist with a secondary specialty in critical care medicine at Northwestern Medicine Palos Hospital.

Prevention is always the best place to start with wildfire smoke, said Dr. Saema Tahir, a New York-based pulmonologist and critical care specialist.

“Rule of thumb: It doesn’t matter if you’re healthy or not, young or old. Avoidance is always the best practice,” she said.

A well-ventilated home

If you’re home, close your windows and doors and run your air-conditioning. Units in windows and above doors need to be “very, very nicely sealed,” Tahir said, so they don’t allow external air in.

Also make sure your home is well-ventilated, particularly in hot weather.

“Heat actually creates more particles that get into the air, and then you have the smoke on top of that. It really exacerbates all the particles we’re breathing in,” Tooba said. “It is key to be in spaces where the air is ventilated since air that’s stagnant, the particles are just staying in place, and that’s not good for us, either.”

To keep home air as clean as possible, use a HEPA filter. These air purification systems are designed to capture at least 99.97% of airborne particles, even the tiny ones like smoke, dust and dander, according to the US Environmental Protection Agency.

Dr. Kirsten Koehler, a professor in the environmental health and engineering departments who Read more

Purchasing a home is one of the most important investments there is. More than a place to live, homeownership is an asset with the potential to tremendously rise in value. But with home prices reaching record heights, affordability plays a huge role for buyers.

The typical home value in the United States was $372,057 in June, 1.1% higher than the year before.

High mortgage rates are also making monthly payments more expensive; as of July 16, the 30-year fixed mortgage rate sits at 6.55%.

Although home prices have inflated all across the U.S., there are some cities that command a higher price tag than others. Location, size, age, and condition are all contributing factors to home value.

Stacker compiled a list of cities with the most expensive homes in California using data from Zillow. Cities are ranked by the Zillow Home Values Index for all homes as of June 2026. The charts in this story were created automatically using Matplotlib.

Metros with the most cities in the top 30 in California
#1. San Francisco-Oakland-Berkeley, CA: 11
#2. Los Angeles-Long Beach-Anaheim, CA: 8
#3. San Jose-Sunnyvale-Santa Clara, CA: 6
#4. San Diego-Chula Vista-Carlsbad, CA: 2
#4. Santa Maria-Santa Barbara, CA: 2
#6. Salinas, CA: 1

#30. San Marino

– Typical home value: $2,839,224
– 1-year price change: +7.0%
– 5-year price change: +22.9%
– Metro area: Los Angeles-Long Beach-Anaheim, CA

#29. Menlo Park

– Typical home value: $2,883,588
– 1-year price change: +6.4%
– 5-year price change: +17.6%
– Metro area: San Francisco-Oakland-Berkeley, CA

#28. Emerald Lake Hills

– Typical home value: $2,894,381
– 1-year price change: +3.4%
– 5-year price change: +10.2%
– Metro area: San Francisco-Oakland-Berkeley, CA

Just in time for National Ice Cream Day on July 19, Instacart dug into a year of ice cream orders to find the flavors and brands filling carts in California, along with the delightfully regional tastes across America.

Ice cream occupies a rare sweet spot in the grocery aisle: It’s nearly universal in appeal yet deeply individual in taste. Ask 10 people their favorite flavor, and you’ll get 10 different answers.

In order to map the country’s sweet tooth, Instacart purchase data from 2025 was used to see how Americans stocked their pints and tubs, tracking which classics held the line, which newer brands surged, and which scoop each state reaches for more than anyone else.

Key Takeaways

• Vanilla is untouchable. It’s America’s most-ordered flavor, accounting for about 21% of all ice cream orders, and the single most popular pick in every one of the 50 states and D.C.
• Häagen-Dazs tops the brands. At roughly 24% of orders, it edges out Ben & Jerry’s, with Breyers rounding out the top three.
• Every region has a signature scoop: rocky road out West, coffee across New England, and butter pecan in the South.
• Hometown dairies win locally. Tillamook is the brand the West favors most, Blue Bell rules the South, and Blue Bunny owns the Plains.
• Better-for-you is booming. The fastest-growing brands are premium, better-for-you pints, led by Alec’s Ice Cream, Rebel, and Van Leeuwen.

California’s signature scoop is rocky road

Vanilla is the most popular flavor in every state hands down, so to find each state’s true personality, Instacart asked a different question: Which flavor is unique to each state, claiming a bigger share of local orders than it does nationally?

The answer draws a surprisingly tidy map. The West runs on rocky road, while coffee percolates across New England, Oregon, New Mexico, and Hawai’i. The South has a soft spot for butter pecan, the mid-Atlantic reaches for mint chocolate chip, and the Heartland stays loyal to good old vanilla.

The real fun, though, is in the one-off favorites.

• Wisconsin, true to its dairy-state roots, goes all in on Moose Tracks, the fudge-and-peanut-butter-cup classic with Midwestern origins.
• Tennessee has a singular soft spot for cheesecake, the only state where the dessert-in-a-tub tops the list.
• And out in the Mountain West, cherry reigns in both Colorado and Wyoming, a pairing that hints at a shared regional taste for something bright and a little old-fashioned. 

None of these would crack a national to

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