Air Quality in Bellingham, Washington — Live
Live readings from PurpleAir sensors across Bellingham — with free alerts the moment smoke moves in.
AQI 14 from 5 PurpleAir sensors · Trending up · data from PurpleAir
As of , the air quality in Bellingham, Washington is AQI 14 — Good and rising — with PM2.5 at 2.5 µg/m³, the median of 5 live PurpleAir sensors reading 3 to 46. Canairy's verdict: Breathe easy.
For scale, that PM2.5 reading is below the World Health Organization's 24-hour guideline of 15 µg/m³. The WHO figure is a daily average and this is a live reading, so read it as a sense of magnitude rather than a formal exceedance — a brief spike and a bad day are not the same thing. More on the WHO guidelines
Pollen today in Bellingham: weeds pollen is the strongest of the three at a very low level, from Google's pollen forecast. Canairy shows the tree, grass and weed forecast beside the air reading on every plan, including the free one.
Free to download · Live data from PurpleAir & public monitors
Live PurpleAir sensor map for Bellingham and Ferndale, Lynden, Blaine, Mount Vernon. Every dot is a real sensor, color-coded by current air quality.
Sensor by sensor in Bellingham
The sensors Canairy reads in Bellingham agree right now — all 5 sit in the Good band, a 43-point spread — so the city-wide number is a fair description of the whole area today.
| From city center | AQI | Category |
|---|---|---|
| 1.3 mi SSW | 3 | Good |
| 2.8 mi NE | 14 | Good |
| 3.0 mi SSW | 3 | Good |
| 4.0 mi E | 26 | Good |
| 4.2 mi WNW | 46 | Good |
For most of the year Bellingham has some of the cleanest air in the country, and the American Lung Association has ranked it among the nation's best cities for ozone. The catch is summer wildfire smoke, which drifts down from British Columbia on the Fraser Valley winds and can push the air from good to unhealthy in a matter of hours.
What Canairy does for Bellingham
A clear verdict
Not just a number — a plain-English call for Bellingham: open the windows, or keep them shut.
Smoke alerts
A push or text the moment the air crosses your threshold — and again when it clears.
A heads-up before it's bad
Trend alerts catch the air turning, so you can close up the house before the smoke settles in.
Every place you care about
Home, work, the kids' school — across Bellingham or across the country, on one screen.
What the air in Bellingham is doing next
| When | Expected air quality | Main pollutant |
|---|---|---|
| Today | Good | PM2.5 |
| Tomorrow | Good | PM2.5 |
| Monday | Good | PM2.5 |
| Tuesday | Good | PM2.5 |
Forecast from EPA AirNow for the Bellingham reporting area. Canairy watches the live sensors against it and tells you when the air actually crosses your threshold, rather than leaving you to check.
Bellingham's clean air has one big exception: wildfire smoke from Canada
On the American Lung Association's most recent State of the Air report, Bellingham ranked among the cleanest cities in the nation for ozone, and Whatcom County earned a straight A for it. Its grade for fine-particle pollution told a different story: a C for short-term particle pollution, driven almost entirely by wildfire smoke. As the Northwest Clean Air Agency's executive director Mark Buford put it, local air quality would be in the A range if wildfire smoke were factored out of the data.
The smoke mostly comes from across the border. British Columbia's wildfire seasons in 2018 and the extreme 2023 summer sent haze south into Whatcom County, and between 2020 and 2022 the area logged eight days when particle pollution was dangerous for everyone, not just sensitive groups. It happens again most summers, including the smoke and heat that rolled in the week of July 19, 2026.
The Fraser Valley acts as a funnel that points smoke straight at Whatcom County
Bellingham sits on the Salish Sea just south of the border, at the mouth of a natural wind channel. When high pressure builds over the interior of British Columbia, Fraser River valley outflow winds push down the valley and out toward the coast, carrying whatever smoke is in the air with them. That flow spills across the border into Whatcom and Skagit counties, which is why northwest Washington often sees smoky skies even when the nearest fire is well up in Canada.
The communities closest to that channel tend to feel it first. During smoke events the Columbia Valley, Kendall and parts of Lynden are usually where air quality alerts single out unhealthy readings, while the marine air off the Salish Sea can keep the waterfront a little clearer. It is a good reminder that a citywide number rarely tells the whole story, and the sensor nearest you matters more than the regional average.
In winter the problem flips to wood smoke and stagnant air
When the wildfires are out, the cold season brings its own particle source. On calm, cold nights the air stops moving and wood smoke from stoves and fireplaces settles near the ground instead of dispersing. The Northwest Clean Air Agency, which has watched over Whatcom County air since 1967, responds by issuing burn bans when the forecast calls for that kind of stagnant air.
The Columbia Valley urban growth area, including the Peaceful Valley and Paradise Lakes developments, is the spot that draws bans most often. On December 31, 2025 the agency raised it to a Stage 2 ban, which halts nearly all indoor and outdoor burning, because cold, calm air was trapping harmful wood smoke close to homes. The fine particles in that smoke are small enough to be inhaled deep into the lungs, which is why the winter bans exist at all.
Bellingham air quality FAQ
What is the air quality in Bellingham right now?
As of September 5, 2026 at 5:10 AM PDT, the air quality in Bellingham, Washington is AQI 14 — Good — with PM2.5 at 2.5 µg/m³, the median of 5 live PurpleAir sensors. Open the windows. Great for outdoor activity.
Why does Bellingham's air get smoky when the fires are in Canada?
Bellingham sits at the coastal end of the Fraser River valley, just south of the British Columbia border. When high pressure builds over the interior, Fraser Valley outflow winds push down the valley and carry wildfire smoke across the border into Whatcom and Skagit counties. That is why northwest Washington can have unhealthy, smoky air even when the nearest active fire is well up in Canada, as it was during the widespread BC smoke seasons of 2018 and 2023.
Is Bellingham's air actually clean the rest of the year?
For ozone, yes. The American Lung Association ranked Bellingham among the nation's cleanest cities for ozone, with an A grade for Whatcom County. Its weaker grade is for fine-particle pollution, and the Northwest Clean Air Agency has said local air would score in the A range if wildfire smoke were taken out of the data. The main non-fire source is winter wood smoke, which is why the agency issues cold-weather burn bans in areas like the Columbia Valley.
What the AQI numbers mean
| AQI | Category | What it means for you |
|---|---|---|
| 0–50 | Good | Open the windows. Great for outdoor activity. |
| 51–100 | Moderate | Sensitive groups may want to take it slower outside. |
| 101–150 | Unhealthy for Sensitive Groups | Kids, elderly, and respiratory conditions stay closer to home. |
| 151–200 | Unhealthy | Skip outdoor exercise. Close windows. |
| 201–300 | Very Unhealthy | Limit time outside. N95 if you must go. |
| 301+ | Hazardous | Health emergency. Stay inside, run filtration if you have it. |
Canairy lets you tighten these bands if you’re more sensitive than the EPA default, so an alert can fire before the official category changes. How to read the Air Quality Index
Where these readings come from
The AQI at the top of this page is the median of the 5 curated PurpleAir sensors Canairy tracks in and around Bellingham, with outliers set aside so that one sensor brought indoors — or parked beside a barbecue — cannot set the number for a whole city. Every sensor behind it is listed above with its distance and bearing from the city center. There is no black box here.
In the app, a place you save resolves the same way first. When no neighborhood sensor is reporting it falls back to the nearest EPA AirNow monitor, and anything modeled rather than measured is labelled a regional estimate rather than passed off as a sensor reading. How low-cost sensors compare to regulatory monitors
About Canairy
Canairy is free to download. The free plan covers one saved place with live readings, a plain-English verdict, and push alerts when the air crosses a threshold you choose. Paid plans add more places, faster refreshes, and SMS alerts. It is built by two parents in Sonoma County, California, who got tired of guessing whether it was safe to send the kids outside. Why we built it
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Air quality near Bellingham
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