Air Quality in Davenport, Iowa — Live

Live readings from PurpleAir sensors across Davenport — with free alerts the moment wildfire smoke rolls in.

Live Davenport AQI from nearby PurpleAir sensors loads when this page opens in a browser, along with a live sensor map covering Davenport and Bettendorf, Rock Island, IL, Moline, IL, East Moline, IL.

Most of the year, the air in Davenport is genuinely good. Scott County's fine-particle readings averaged under 11 micrograms per cubic meter every year from 2017 through 2020, comfortably inside the EPA's healthy range, with the cleanest stretches typically running May into June and again from September into October. The exception showed up hard this summer: in July 2026, wildfire smoke drifting down from Canada and Minnesota pushed the Quad Cities' air quality index to 176 — unhealthy for everyone — and triggered a joint alert from the Illinois EPA and Iowa DNR that held into the following evening.

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.

Davenport's worst air days come from Canadian wildfire smoke, not anything local

On the afternoon of July 19, 2026, the air quality index in the Quad Cities hit 176 — squarely in the unhealthy range — before easing only slightly to 156 by 7:30 that evening. The Illinois EPA and Iowa Department of Natural Resources issued a joint air quality alert that carried into Monday. None of it started here: the smoke came from wildfires burning in Canada and Minnesota, and had already blanketed cities from Chicago to Minneapolis before it settled over Davenport and Bettendorf.

It wasn't a one-off. Barely a week later, local station WQAD was warning residents that another round of smoke was straining both lungs and air conditioners as haze rolled back through the region. That's the pattern Davenport residents are learning to watch for each summer now: clear skies one day, a brown haze and a scratchy throat the next, driven by fires hundreds of miles away that never show up on any local map.

On an ordinary day, it's dust, diesel, and fall leaf smoke

Away from smoke season, Davenport's tracked air quality data points to a much more local set of contributors: dust kicked up from surrounding farmland and gravel roads, construction sites, and — come autumn — smoke from residents burning leaves in their yards. Add in sulfur dioxide from coal-fired power plants and nitrogen oxides from vehicle exhaust, the building blocks of ground-level ozone, and that's most of what an ordinary bad-air day in Scott County looks like.

The numbers back up how mild that ordinary day tends to be: Scott County's annual PM2.5 average ran between 9.5 and 10.8 micrograms per cubic meter every year from 2017 to 2020 — well under the EPA's 12-microgram health standard. December has tended to be the dustiest month in that record, at 13.8 micrograms, which tracks with more wood stoves and idling engines once the cold sets in.

The river valley here doesn't trap air the way a mountain valley does

Davenport sits at 660 feet elevation on a stretch of the Mississippi River that, unusually, runs east to west instead of the river's typical north-south course, with the city strung along the Iowa bank across from Rock Island and Moline on the Illinois side. There's no ring of mountains here — the land rolls out into farmland in every direction, flat enough that Deere & Company built a major manufacturing plant right in the city.

That geography matters for air quality as much as for the view: without hills to box the valley in, smoke and haze here tend to be visitors, not residents. The July 2026 wildfire smoke arrived on the wind and cleared out again within a couple of days once the wind shifted, rather than settling in for weeks the way it can in a mountain-ringed basin out west. The same goes for everyday dust and exhaust — with nothing to trap it, it disperses quickly, which is a big part of why the county's year-round numbers stay as low as they do.

Davenport air quality FAQ

What is the air quality in Davenport right now?

This page shows the current AQI for Davenport, 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 did Davenport get hazy in July 2026?

Wildfire smoke from fires burning in Canada and Minnesota drifted across the Midwest, from Chicago to Minneapolis, before settling over the Quad Cities. On July 19, 2026, the air quality index reached 176 — unhealthy for everyone — prompting a joint alert from the Illinois EPA and Iowa DNR, and a second round of smoke returned about a week later.

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.

Where does Canairy's Davenport data come from?

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

What causes Davenport's everyday air pollution, if not wildfire smoke?

Away from smoke season, the biggest contributors are dust from surrounding farmland and gravel roads, construction sites, and smoke from burning leaves in the fall, plus sulfur dioxide from coal-fired power plants and vehicle exhaust that feeds ground-level ozone. Even so, Scott County's annual fine-particle average has stayed between roughly 9.5 and 10.8 micrograms per cubic meter in recent years, well inside the EPA's healthy range.

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