Fires represent an air quality challenge because they are large, dynamic and transient sources of particulate matter and ozone precursors. Transported smoke can deteriorate air quality over large regions. Fire severity and frequency are likely to increase in the future, exacerbating an existing problem. Using the National Environmental Satellite, Data and Information Service (NESDIS) Hazard Mapping System (HMS) smoke data for North America for the period 2007 to 2014, we examine a subset of fires that are confirmed to have produced sufficient smoke to warrant the initiation of a U.S. National Weather Service smoke forecast. We find that gridded HMS analyzed fires are well correlated (r = 0.84) with emissions from the Global Fire Emissions Inventory Database 4s (GFED4s). We define a new metric, smoke hours, by linking observed smoke plumes to active fires using ensembles of forward trajectories. This work shows that the Southwest, Northwest, and Northwest Territories trigger the most air quality forecasts, and produce more smoke than any other North American region by measure of the number of HYSPIT points analyzed, the duration of those HYSPLIT points, and the total number of smoke hours produced. The average number of days with smoke plumes overhead is largest over the north-central U.S. Only Alaska, the Northwest, the Southwest, and Southeast U.S. regions produce the majority of smoke plumes observed over their own borders. This work moves a new dataset from a daily operational setting to a research context, and it demonstrates how changes to the frequency or intensity of fires in the western U.S. could impact other regions.