Air Quality in Aurora, Colorado — Live

Live readings from sensors across Aurora — including the city's own AIRVIEW network — with free alerts when summer ozone or drifting wildfire smoke push the air past healthy.

Live Aurora AQI from nearby PurpleAir sensors loads when this page opens in a browser, along with a live sensor map covering Aurora and Denver, Centennial, Parker, Commerce City.

Aurora's air is fine on most days, but ozone is the real story here, not wildfire smoke. Aurora sits inside the nine-county Denver Metro/North Front Range area that regulators reclassified from "moderate" to "serious" ozone nonattainment in 2024, based on monitoring from 2021 through 2023 that showed the region still isn't meeting the EPA's health standard. On hot, sunny, windless summer afternoons, that shows up as a genuine spike, even under a blue sky.

Canairy watches the sensors around your home, your kids' school, and everywhere else you care about, and tells you in plain English when the air changes enough to matter.

Aurora's real air problem is ozone, not smoke

The Denver Metro/North Front Range ozone nonattainment area covers nine counties — Adams, Arapahoe, Boulder, Broomfield, Denver, Douglas, Jefferson, Weld, and part of Larimer — and Aurora sits inside three of them: Arapahoe, Adams, and Douglas. In 2024 the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment asked the EPA to reclassify the region from "moderate" to "serious" nonattainment for the 2015 ozone standard, based on monitoring data from 2021 through 2023 that still exceeded the federal limit.

Ozone isn't released directly — it forms when vehicle exhaust and vapors from oil and gas wells in the DJ Basin to the north and east cook in strong sunlight. Aurora sits roughly a mile above sea level, where sunlight is more intense, so on hot, calm summer days the same traffic and drilling emissions that would be background noise at lower elevation can push ozone into the range that's rough on kids, older adults, and anyone with asthma.

Aurora built its own air-quality network for a reason

Aurora's Energy & Environment Division runs AIRVIEW, the city's own air-monitoring program — 15 stations spread across every ward, the first government-sponsored network of its kind in the city. The stations track particulate matter, VOCs, ozone, carbon monoxide, and nitrogen dioxide, plus temperature, humidity, and wind, because a single citywide number hides a lot in a city this size.

Aurora covers more than 165 square miles across three counties, from older neighborhoods near the Aurora Mall to newer subdivisions out past E-470 close to Denver International Airport. Traffic on I-225, I-70, and E-470 concentrates pollution differently block by block, which is exactly why Canairy reads sensors near the places you've actually saved instead of one number for the whole city.

When Canadian wildfire smoke does drift in

Aurora doesn't have a local fire season the way California does, but it isn't immune to smoke from far away. In May 2023, smoke from Canadian wildfires pushed into northeastern Colorado hard enough that the state health department issued an air quality health advisory covering 22 counties, including Adams and Arapahoe — Aurora's home counties — and Denver briefly ranked among the worst air quality of any city in the world.

Those events are occasional, not seasonal, and they can arrive with little warning since the source is thousands of miles away. That's the case for watching the numbers rather than the sky: Colorado's clear, sunny weather doesn't always mean the air matches it, whether the cause is imported smoke or a still, hot ozone afternoon.

Aurora air quality FAQ

What is the air quality in Aurora right now?

This page shows the current AQI for Aurora, calculated from sensors across the city and updated continuously. The map below shows every live sensor, including Aurora's own AIRVIEW monitoring stations, so you can check the reading closest to your own neighborhood.

Why is ozone Aurora's biggest air-quality problem, not wildfire smoke?

Aurora sits inside the Denver Metro/North Front Range ozone nonattainment area, reclassified "serious" by the EPA in 2024 after monitoring from 2021 through 2023 showed the region still exceeding the federal ozone standard. High elevation intensifies the sunlight that cooks vehicle exhaust and oil-and-gas vapors into ozone, so summer afternoons — not fire season — are when Aurora's air is most likely to cross into unhealthy territory.

Does wildfire smoke ever reach Aurora?

Yes, occasionally. In May 2023, smoke from Canadian wildfires was thick enough over northeastern Colorado that the state issued an air quality health advisory for 22 counties, including Aurora's home counties of Adams and Arapahoe, and Denver briefly had some of the worst air quality of any city in the world. It's an occasional event carried in from far away, not an annual local fire season.

What AQI level is unhealthy?

Under the US EPA scale, AQI 0–50 is Good and 51–100 is Moderate. From 101 the air is Unhealthy for Sensitive Groups — kids, older adults, and people with asthma or heart conditions — and above 150 it's Unhealthy for everyone. Canairy translates these numbers into a plain-English verdict, like whether to close the windows or move a workout indoors.

Is Canairy free?

Yes. The Canairy app is free to download and includes live air quality for all your saved places, plain-English verdicts, and free push alerts when the air crosses your threshold. A paid plan adds extras like SMS text alerts.

Where does Canairy's Aurora data come from?

Readings come from PurpleAir's network of laser particle sensors across Aurora and surrounding towns, cross-referenced with government monitors and the Google Air Quality API. You can see every sensor behind your numbers on the live map — there's no black box.

Get Canairy free on Google Play.