Air Quality in Clovis, California — Live

Live readings from PurpleAir sensors across Clovis — with free alerts the moment Sierra smoke reaches the valley floor.

Live Clovis AQI from nearby PurpleAir sensors loads when this page opens in a browser, along with a live sensor map covering Clovis and Fresno, Sanger, Prather, Madera.

Clovis sits where the San Joaquin Valley floor starts to tilt up into the Sierra foothills, about six miles northeast of downtown Fresno. Most of the year the air here is unremarkable, and it has been improving: in 2025 the Valley Air District logged only five Unhealthy days across all eight of its counties, down from more than a hundred a decade earlier, and for the first time every federal reference monitor in the Valley came in under the 24-hour PM2.5 standard. Two things still break that pattern. Late summer and fall, a fire in the Sierra National Forest sends smoke down the Highway 168 corridor into town. And in midwinter, cold air settles over the Valley and holds a few days' worth of exhaust and wood smoke in place.

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.

The smoke usually comes down Highway 168

Highway 168 leaves Fresno as the Sierra Freeway, runs through Clovis, then narrows to Tollhouse Road past Shepherd Avenue and climbs into the mountains toward Shaver Lake and Huntington Lake. That is also the country that burns. The Creek Fire started on the evening of September 4, 2020 in the Big Creek drainage, and roughly eighteen hours later produced a pyrocumulonimbus cloud that was one of the largest such events ever recorded in North America. It burned 379,895 acres and 856 structures, and was not fully contained until December 24 — 112 days later.

It is not a one-off. The Garnet Fire, started by lightning on August 24, 2025, burned through the same Sierra National Forest above Clovis; by early September it had passed 54,000 acres, and it came close enough to the McKinley Grove that crews ran sprinklers around the giant sequoias. On August 28 that year the Valley Air District warned that smoke could reach the Valley floor through the weekend and told residents to stay indoors, build a clean-air room, or use one of its Clean Air Centers.

What the Clovis monitor recorded in 2020

The Air District operates a reference monitoring station in Clovis, on North Villa Avenue, measuring PM2.5 and ozone. During the Creek Fire the 24-hour PM2.5 average in Clovis, Fresno and Madera reached roughly 200 micrograms per cubic meter — five to six times the federal 24-hour standard of 35 — and on September 14, 2020, the worst day, readings in Clovis and Madera went over 300. From mid-August to mid-October that year at least one Valley town broke the federal standard on nearly every single day, and on ten separate days the entire Valley was unhealthy at once.

The reason is geography. The Valley is walled in on three sides by mountains, so smoke pools on the floor instead of blowing out. As the District's director of air quality science put it afterward, the levels themselves were not unprecedented — what was different in 2020 was seeing them across the whole San Joaquin Valley at the same time.

Winter is a different problem

From November 1 through the end of February the Air District runs Check Before You Burn under Rule 4901. The call is made county by county, so Clovis follows the Fresno County declaration. There are three levels: no burning at all, midnight to midnight, with fines for violations; no burning unless you have registered an EPA-certified or pellet-fueled device with the District; and burning discouraged, where seasoned dry firewood is allowed but trash and plastics never are. Unregistered wood stoves, open fireplaces and outdoor fire pits stay off-limits on curtailment days.

The wider picture stays hard. In the American Lung Association's 2026 State of the Air, built on 2022 to 2024 data, the Fresno metro area — which includes Clovis — ranked fourth worst in the nation for year-round particle pollution, fifth for ozone with 54.5 high-ozone days a year, and sixth for short-term particle pollution. The same report recorded Fresno posting some of its lowest annual particle levels on record. Both things are true at once.

Clovis air quality FAQ

Why is there smoke in Clovis today?

Most often it is a wildfire in the Sierra National Forest east of town, with smoke drawn down the canyons and settling on the Valley floor — that is what happened with the Creek Fire in 2020 and the Garnet Fire in 2025. In winter it is more likely residential wood smoke on a stagnant night, which is why the Air District runs Check Before You Burn from November through February. The Valley Air District's own rule of thumb is that if you can smell smoke and see ash, you are being affected by poor air quality. This page shows what the sensors nearest you are reading right now, rather than a single citywide number.

What is the air quality in Clovis right now?

This page shows the current AQI for Clovis, 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.

Can I use my fireplace in Clovis tonight?

Between November 1 and the end of February, that depends on the day. The Air District declares a burn status for Fresno County each day under Rule 4901. On a no-burn day, solid-fuel burning is prohibited midnight to midnight and violations carry fines. On a no-burning-unless-registered day, only a device you have registered with the District — EPA-certified or pellet-fueled — may be used. Open fireplaces, unregistered stoves and outdoor fire pits are not allowed on curtailment days at all. Check the District's daily declaration before you light anything.

Is the air in Clovis any better than Fresno's?

They share the same airshed, and the American Lung Association ranks them together as one metro area. Clovis does have its own reference monitor on North Villa Avenue, and on a given hour the reading there can differ from one across Fresno — smoke plumes and inversions are not evenly spread. But there is no basis for saying Clovis is meaningfully cleaner as a rule. What is worth watching is the sensor nearest you, not the city average.

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.