California Air Quality & Wildfire Smoke
Live AQI for 10 California cities, plus statewide air-quality alerts. Data from AirNow (U.S. EPA).
Wildfire smoke in California
Smoke risk across California concentrates in September through December, driven by Santa Ana wind events pushing fire and smoke toward the coast, which is why the worst days here can fall late in the year.
The 10 cities tracked here span roughly 543 miles, which is far enough that they routinely sit in different air masses. A reading in Los Angeles does not describe the whole state during a plume — check the city nearest you rather than assuming the largest one is representative.
Each city page below shows AirNow's reported AQI on the 2024 EPA breakpoints, with the reporting monitor and the observation time — see how we calculate AQI. Statewide watches and warnings come from the National Weather Service and appear at the top of this page when active.
Cross-border check: the nearest city we track outside California is Las Vegas, NV, about 230 miles northeast of Los Angeles. Smoke does not stop at state lines — when a plume covers that city's monitors, California's edge nearest it is usually seeing the same air.
Our next-nearest tracked readings sit in Phoenix, AZ (355 mi east) and Carson City, NV (363 mi north) — useful second opinions when California's own reading looks odd, and the honest picture of how coarse national smoke coverage is at this resolution.
Tracking fires themselves, not just the smoke? Our California fire map guide lists the official state and federal incident maps and what each one is authoritative for.
California is one of the more closely watched states in our national coverage — we track 10 cities here, more than most states — so intra-state differences are visible rather than averaged away.