Air Quality in Clarksville, Tennessee — Live

Live readings from PurpleAir sensors across Clarksville — with free alerts the moment ozone or smoke crosses your threshold.

Live Clarksville AQI from nearby PurpleAir sensors loads when this page opens in a browser, along with a live sensor map covering Clarksville and Oak Grove, KY, Hopkinsville, KY, Dover, TN, Fort Campbell.

Clarksville doesn't sit in fire country, and for most of the year the air here is genuinely unremarkable in a good way. What Middle Tennessee does get is ground-level ozone: on hot, sunny, windless days from roughly April through September, sunlight cooks vehicle and industrial exhaust into ozone faster than it can clear, and the Tennessee Department of Environment and Conservation has issued Code Orange ozone alerts for the region in multiple recent years. The exception that proved the rule was the summer of 2023, when smoke from Canadian wildfires drifted more than a thousand miles south and triggered a Code Orange alert here too — twice.

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.

Clarksville's real air-quality story is ozone season, not wildfire

Ground-level ozone, not smoke, is the recurring issue here. On hot, sunny, calm days sunlight reacts with vehicle and industrial exhaust to form ozone faster than it disperses, and TDEC has been issuing Code Orange ozone action day alerts for the region for over a decade — one in August 2014 was flagged as the first Air Quality Alert for the area that year, and TDEC issued another Code Orange alert in June 2018 that it extended through midnight that Friday.

Montgomery County has a documented ozone history to go with it: EPA once classified the county, as part of the Clarksville-Hopkinsville, TN-KY area, as nonattainment for the 1997 8-hour ozone standard, before redesignating it to attainment and maintenance on November 21, 2005. The county has stayed in compliance since, but the hot, humid, stagnant summer weather that caused the problem hasn't gone anywhere, which is why TDEC still tracks ozone here every summer and issues an alert whenever forecasts cross the unhealthy-for-sensitive-groups line.

The one time wildfire smoke really did show up: summer 2023

Clarksville got an unusual reminder in 2023 that distance doesn't always protect you. On June 29, TDEC issued a Code Orange health advisory for the Clarksville area alongside a heat warning that pushed the heat index to 113 degrees, cautioning that ground-level particulate concentrations could approach unhealthy levels. Then on July 16, TDEC issued a second Code Orange alert, this one specifically for smoke drifting down from Canadian wildfires, which cut visibility across Middle Tennessee and southern Kentucky to around five miles.

Both alerts landed during the same summer that sent Canadian wildfire smoke over huge stretches of the eastern United States, and Clarksville's brush with it was real, if brief, next to what cities in the Northeast and Midwest saw that year. It's a useful data point rather than a pattern: the city's air isn't normally exposed to wildfire smoke, but a big enough fire season a thousand miles away can still turn a clear Middle Tennessee sky hazy for a day or two.

Flat Highland Rim terrain, but one of the busiest two-lane freeways in the country

Clarksville sits at about 476 feet on the northwestern edge of the Highland Rim, right where the Cumberland River and the Red River converge, and the terrain is mostly rolling rather than a closed valley or basin. That matters for air quality: unlike cities boxed in by mountains, Clarksville doesn't usually get the kind of multi-day temperature inversion that traps smoke or smog in place. Ozone and haze here tend to build and clear with the weather rather than get stuck for a week.

The steadier local pollution source is traffic. Interstate 24 runs along the city's eastern edge on its way to Nashville, and the roughly 35-mile stretch between the two cities carries more than 80,000 vehicles a day in places — one of the highest traffic counts of any two-lane-per-direction interstate segment in the country, and part of a north-south freight corridor that runs all the way from Chicago to Atlanta. That volume of vehicle and truck exhaust concentrated along one corridor is a quieter, more constant contributor to the county's air than any single ozone alert day.

Clarksville air quality FAQ

What is the air quality in Clarksville right now?

This page shows the current AQI for Clarksville, 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.

Why does Clarksville get ozone alerts in the summer?

Ozone season in Middle Tennessee runs roughly April through September. On hot, sunny, calm days, sunlight reacts with vehicle and industrial exhaust to form ground-level ozone faster than it can disperse. The Tennessee Department of Environment and Conservation has issued Code Orange ozone action day alerts for the Clarksville area in multiple recent years, and Montgomery County was once formally designated an ozone nonattainment area before being redesignated to attainment in 2005.

Did wildfire smoke ever reach Clarksville?

Yes, briefly. In summer 2023, TDEC issued a Code Orange air quality alert on June 29 during a severe heat wave, and a second Code Orange alert on July 16 specifically for smoke drifting in from Canadian wildfires, which cut visibility across the region to around five miles. Wildfire smoke isn't a regular feature of Clarksville's air the way it is in the western US, but that summer showed it can still reach here.

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.

Where does Canairy's Clarksville data come from?

Readings come from PurpleAir's network of laser particle sensors across Clarksville 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.

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.