Air Quality in Bellevue, Washington — Live

Live readings from PurpleAir sensors across Bellevue — with free alerts the moment smoke reaches the Eastside.

Live Bellevue AQI from nearby PurpleAir sensors loads when this page opens in a browser, along with a live sensor map covering Bellevue and Kirkland, Redmond, Mercer Island, Issaquah.

Bellevue sits between Lake Washington and Lake Sammamish on the Eastside, and its air is good most of the year. The Puget Sound Clean Air Agency reports that the four-county region continues to meet the federal health standards for all six criteria pollutants, and it holds itself to a stricter daily fine-particle goal than the federal one. The communities carrying the region's worst wood smoke are South End Tacoma, Marysville and Darrington — not Bellevue. What does reach Bellevue is smoke from somewhere else: the Cascades in late summer and early fall, and British Columbia when the wind turns northeasterly. When it settles into the Puget Sound lowlands it does not sort itself neatly by city.

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.

October 2022, when the Eastside took the worst of it

That autumn the Bolt Creek Fire near Skykomish burned more than 14,000 acres and the Loch Katrine Fire, about thirty miles east of Seattle, added another 1,200. Seattle had gone without significant rain since June 9 in what was its driest summer on record, and it was the first year a major smoke event over densely populated western Washington ever stretched into October.

On October 18 and 19 Seattle held the worst air quality of any major city in the world on IQAir's ranking, two days running. Local reporting during that stretch noted some of the worst readings were on the Eastside — people were standing in Bellevue Downtown Park unable to see the lake. It is the clearest case on record that being east of Lake Washington is not protection.

September 2020 remains the worst on Washington's record

The Labor Day fires produced smoke across the whole state. Air quality in the Puget Sound region fell to unhealthy on September 8, and between September 12 and 17 every single air quality monitor in Washington recorded fine particle pollution above the federal 24-hour standard.

Ecology described it as the most days that statewide monitoring sites had recorded hazardous air going back to 2000, with the majority of the state seeing at least five consecutive days of very unhealthy or hazardous conditions. Rain on the 17th began to clear it and the event ended around the 21st. Nothing since has approached it.

Winter here is quieter than people expect

Bellevue's winter risk is inversions rather than any large local source. When winds go calm in the colder months, a temperature inversion traps air near the ground and wood stoves and fireplaces build up beneath it — which is why the regional agency has authority to declare mandatory burn bans across King, Kitsap, Pierce and Snohomish counties.

In practice Bellevue is not where that bites hardest, and this past winter — the eighth warmest on record — stayed below burn ban thresholds entirely, with none issued. The agency has scrapped over 570 old wood stoves across the four counties since March 2025, and more than 90 percent of the four-county population now lives within five kilometres of a fine particle sensor.

Bellevue air quality FAQ

Why is there smoke in Bellevue today?

Almost always something burning a long way off. From roughly July into October it is wildfire smoke — Cascade fires like Bolt Creek and Loch Katrine in 2022, Oregon fires as in September 2020, or British Columbia fires carried south on a northeasterly wind. In the colder months, smoke on a still night is usually residential wood burning held down by an inversion. Wind direction is the quickest tell: a northeasterly in summer generally means Canadian smoke, while a returning marine flow off Puget Sound is what clears it out.

What is the air quality in Bellevue right now?

This page shows the current AQI for Bellevue, calculated from PurpleAir sensors across the city and updated continuously. The map below shows every live sensor, so you can check the reading closest to your own neighborhood.

Is Bellevue's air better than Seattle's?

Not reliably. Both sit in the same Puget Sound lowland airshed, and during the October 2022 smoke event local coverage noted that some of the worst readings were on the Eastside. Bellevue has no large local pollution source of its own, but on smoke days the difference between Bellevue and Seattle is usually smaller than the difference between one Bellevue neighborhood and another on a given hour.

Does Canadian wildfire smoke reach Bellevue?

It does, and how badly depends on the wind. In July 2026 northeasterly winds pushed Canadian wildfire smoke into western Washington during a heat advisory. Whatcom and Skagit counties went under an air quality alert with unhealthy levels forecast near Bellingham and Mount Vernon, while the Seattle and Bellevue area stayed at Moderate and was not placed under an alert at all. That is the usual pattern — the northern border counties take the brunt — but not every time.

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.

Get Canairy free on Google Play.