Air Quality in Buffalo, New York — Live
Live readings from PurpleAir sensors across Buffalo — with free alerts the moment smoke drifts in.
AQI 42 from 4 PurpleAir sensors · Holding steady · data from PurpleAir
As of , the air quality in Buffalo, New York is AQI 42 — Good and holding steady — with PM2.5 at 7.7 µg/m³, the median of 4 live PurpleAir sensors reading 28 to 51. 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 Buffalo: weeds pollen is the strongest of the three at a moderate 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 Buffalo and Cheektowaga, Tonawanda, Amherst, Lackawanna. Every dot is a real sensor, color-coded by current air quality.
Sensor by sensor in Buffalo
The sensors Canairy reads in Buffalo are 23 AQI points apart right now, from Good to Moderate, which is the whole reason one city-wide number can mislead you: the median describes air you may not be standing in.
| From city center | AQI | Category |
|---|---|---|
| 1.9 mi NNW | 28 | Good |
| 1.9 mi SSE | 49 | Good |
| 7.3 mi SE | 51 | Moderate |
| 7.5 mi NE | 36 | Good |
Buffalo's air is shaped by three things at once: the record wildfire smoke that blanketed the Northeast in June 2023, a heavy-industry past that left a real pollution legacy just outside the city, and the constant grind of border-truck traffic at the Peace Bridge. Sitting at the east end of Lake Erie, the city can go from clear lake air to smoke-hazed skies in a single afternoon when the wind shifts.
What Canairy does for Buffalo
A clear verdict
Not just a number — a plain-English call for Buffalo: 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 Buffalo or across the country, on one screen.
What the air in Buffalo is doing next
| When | AQI | Expected air quality | Main pollutant |
|---|---|---|---|
| Today | 38 | Good | PM2.5 |
| Tomorrow | 34 | Good | PM2.5 |
| Monday | 40 | Good | PM2.5 |
| Tuesday | 42 | Good | PM2.5 |
Forecast from EPA AirNow for the Western New York Region 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.
The summer of 2023 changed how Buffalo thinks about smoke
In June 2023, smoke from Canadian wildfires drifted south across the Great Lakes and the Northeast, and by the evening of June 7 roughly 128 million Americans were under air quality alerts. Upstate, Syracuse watched its AQI climb past 400, deep into the hazardous range, and the whole of Western New York sat under the same haze and health advisories.
It did not stop there. A second wave in late June pushed smoke back over the Great Lakes, dropping Chicago to a 228 AQI and putting the region on notice that this was not a one-off. For a city that used to treat wildfire smoke as a West Coast problem, 2023 made clear that a bad fire season in Quebec or Ontario is now a Buffalo problem too.
A heavy-industry legacy still sits just outside the city
Buffalo grew up on steel and chemicals, and some of that legacy is recent history rather than ancient. Tonawanda Coke, on River Road just north of the city, was found to be venting coke-oven gases containing benzene straight into the air through an unreported pressure-relief system, and dumping coal tar sludge on the ground. The case started with residents doing their own air monitoring in 2009, which pulled in the EPA.
In March 2013 a federal jury convicted the company on 11 Clean Air Act counts and three counts under the hazardous-waste law, and it was ordered to pay $12.5 million in penalties plus $12.2 million toward the community. South of the city, the old Bethlehem Steel complex in Lackawanna is another reminder of the same era. The plants are quieter now, but the story is why longtime residents pay attention to what is in the air, not just how it looks.
The Peace Bridge keeps diesel traffic pressed against the West Side
The Peace Bridge is one of the busiest truck crossings on the entire Canada-US border, with about 4,000 trucks a day and more than a million a year moving between Buffalo and Fort Erie. During peak periods, backups can stretch to nearly four hours, which means a lot of heavy diesel engines idling right at the edge of the city.
That plaza and its approaches sit against Buffalo's West Side, a dense residential neighborhood. Traffic-related pollution from that many trucks -- fine particles and diesel exhaust -- tends to concentrate near busy corridors and border plazas, which is exactly why a live sensor a few blocks away can read very differently from one across town on a calm day.
Buffalo air quality FAQ
What is the air quality in Buffalo right now?
As of September 5, 2026 at 8:10 AM EDT, the air quality in Buffalo, New York is AQI 42 — Good — with PM2.5 at 7.7 µg/m³, the median of 4 live PurpleAir sensors. Open the windows. Great for outdoor activity.
Is there a smoke map for Buffalo?
Yes — the map on this page plots every PurpleAir sensor in and around Buffalo in real time, each with its own current reading, out through Cheektowaga, Tonawanda, Amherst and Lackawanna. It is worth knowing what that map measures. A satellite smoke map shows where a plume is drifting overhead, which is not always the same as what is reaching the ground; these sensors measure the fine particles in the air you are actually breathing. In Buffalo that gap cuts both ways. Smoke carried down from Ontario or Quebec can arrive off Lake Erie and change the reading across the whole city in an afternoon, but the city also has sources a satellite will never pick out — the diesel traffic backed up at the Peace Bridge, the industrial corridor along River Road. On a calm day a sensor a few blocks from a busy corridor can read very differently from one across town, so it is worth checking the one nearest you.
Does wildfire smoke reach Buffalo?
Yes, and 2023 proved it. In June 2023, smoke from Canadian wildfires blanketed the Northeast and Great Lakes; by the evening of June 7 about 128 million Americans were under air quality alerts, and upstate Syracuse saw its AQI pass 400. A second episode late that month pushed smoke back across the Great Lakes. When the wind carries smoke down from Ontario or Quebec, Western New York gets the same haze and alerts, which is why it helps to watch the trend rather than just the sky.
Why does Buffalo have an industrial pollution reputation?
The city grew up on steel and chemical manufacturing, and some of that history is recent. Tonawanda Coke, on River Road just north of Buffalo, was convicted in March 2013 on 11 Clean Air Act counts after it was found venting benzene straight to the air, and ordered to pay $12.5 million in penalties plus $12.2 million to the community. The old Bethlehem Steel site in Lackawanna is another marker of the same era. That legacy is a big reason locals keep an eye on air quality readings.
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 4 curated PurpleAir sensors Canairy tracks in and around Buffalo, 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
Go deeper
Air quality near Buffalo
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