Air Quality in Burlington, Vermont — Live
Live readings from PurpleAir sensors across Burlington — with free alerts the moment smoke moves in.
AQI 0 from 4 PurpleAir sensors · Holding steady · data from PurpleAir
As of , the air quality in Burlington, Vermont is AQI 0 — Good and holding steady — with PM2.5 at 0.0 µg/m³, the median of 4 live PurpleAir sensors reading 0 to 0. 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 Burlington: 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 Burlington and South Burlington, Winooski, Essex Junction, Shelburne. Every dot is a real sensor, color-coded by current air quality.
Sensor by sensor in Burlington
The sensors Canairy reads in Burlington agree right now — all 4 sit in the Good band, a 0-point spread — so the city-wide number is a fair description of the whole area today.
| From city center | AQI | Category |
|---|---|---|
| 0.8 mi S | 0 | Good |
| 0.8 mi N | 0 | Good |
| 4.1 mi NE | 0 | Good |
| 6.3 mi NE | 0 | Good |
Most of the year, Burlington's air is genuinely clean — the Burlington-South Burlington metro area regularly ranks among the cleanest in the country for ozone pollution, and the median AQI sits comfortably in the Good range. The exception arrived in the summer of 2023, when smoke from Quebec's wildfires drifted south over Lake Champlain and gave Vermont its worst air quality on record.
What Canairy does for Burlington
A clear verdict
Not just a number — a plain-English call for Burlington: 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 Burlington or across the country, on one screen.
A lake and two mountain ranges shape the air here
Burlington sits on the eastern shore of Lake Champlain, in a valley pinched between the Adirondacks in New York to the west and the Green Mountains to the east. That combination — a big lake moderating temperatures and steep ridgelines on both sides — usually works in the city's favor, and it is a big part of why the Burlington-South Burlington-Barre metro area continues to rank among the nation's cleanest for ozone in the American Lung Association's State of the Air report.
Chittenden County's median AQI has hovered in the low 40s for years, squarely inside the Good band. Most days here do not need a second thought. But the same valley geography that keeps things calm also means that when smoke does arrive from somewhere else, the lake basin can hold onto it rather than sweep it through quickly.
The summer of 2023 changed what "bad air day" means in Burlington
In early June 2023, smoke from wildfires burning in Quebec turned the sun red and hazed over the sky across northern Vermont, prompting the state's first air quality alert of the season. That turned out to be the mild version. Later that month, on June 25 and 26, a second and much heavier plume settled over Burlington overnight, pushing PM2.5 to 174 micrograms per cubic meter — an AQI of 224, Very Unhealthy by EPA standards, and the worst air quality ever recorded in Vermont.
Montreal, the source of much of that smoke, had the worst air quality of any major city in the world that same day. Vermont's Agency of Natural Resources and Department of Health urged residents to stay indoors, run air conditioning on recirculate instead of opening windows, and reach for an N95 or P100 mask — a cloth mask, they noted, does not filter wildfire smoke.
What to actually do when smoke shows up
The lesson from 2023 is that Burlington can go from a clear, lake-breeze afternoon to hazardous air within a matter of hours once a plume tracks in from Quebec or Ontario, so it is worth checking your number before you commit to a run along the waterfront or a kid's outdoor practice. Close the windows early once smoke is forecast — a house fills with fine particles fast and clears slowly.
If anyone in your home is a kid, is pregnant, is over 65, or lives with asthma or heart disease, it is worth knowing your AQI before the sky looks smoky, since the smallest particles do their damage long before you can smell campfire in the air. Canairy tracks the sensors near the places you've saved so you get that number without having to go dig for it yourself.
Burlington air quality FAQ
What is the air quality in Burlington right now?
As of September 14, 2026 at 8:10 AM EDT, the air quality in Burlington, Vermont is AQI 0 — Good — with PM2.5 at 0.0 µg/m³, the median of 4 live PurpleAir sensors. Open the windows. Great for outdoor activity.
Why did Burlington's air quality get so bad in June 2023?
Smoke from wildfires burning in Quebec and Ontario drifted south over Lake Champlain in two waves. The first, in early June, brought haze and a reddish sun. The second, on June 25-26, was far worse: PM2.5 hit 174 micrograms per cubic meter, an AQI of 224, the worst air quality ever recorded in Vermont.
Does Burlington usually have good air quality?
Yes. The Burlington-South Burlington-Barre metro area regularly ranks among the nation's cleanest for ozone pollution, and Chittenden County's median AQI sits in the low 40s, well within the Good range. Smoke events like the one in June 2023 are the exception, not the rule, but they can arrive with little warning when fires are burning hundreds of miles north.
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 Burlington, 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 Burlington
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