Air Quality in Des Moines, Iowa — Live
Live readings from PurpleAir sensors across Des Moines — with free alerts when the air changes, from summer haze to wildfire smoke drifting down from Canada.
AQI 10 from 4 PurpleAir sensors · Holding steady · data from PurpleAir
As of , the air quality in Des Moines, Iowa is AQI 10 — Good and holding steady — with PM2.5 at 1.8 µg/m³, the median of 4 live PurpleAir sensors reading 6 to 11. 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 Des Moines: weeds pollen is the strongest of the three at a very high 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 Des Moines and West Des Moines, Ankeny, Urbandale, Johnston. Every dot is a real sensor, color-coded by current air quality.
Sensor by sensor in Des Moines
The sensors Canairy reads in Des Moines agree right now — all 4 sit in the Good band, a 5-point spread — so the city-wide number is a fair description of the whole area today.
| From city center | AQI | Category |
|---|---|---|
| 0.8 mi SSE | 6 | Good |
| 1.4 mi NW | 9 | Good |
| 1.4 mi NW | 11 | Good |
| 5.4 mi ENE | 10 | Good |
Des Moines used to be one of the cleanest metros in the country for ozone, and it isn't anymore. Flat central Iowa still doesn't trap pollution the way a mountain valley does, but the American Lung Association's 2026 State of the Air report gives Polk County a D for ozone on an average of 3 unhealthy days a year, ranking the metro 80th worst of 228. Two editions earlier the same county held a straight A with zero unhealthy ozone days; it fell off the report's cleanest-cities list in 2025, a decline the Lung Association attributed partly to extreme heat and wildfires. That second factor is the one residents notice: Canadian wildfire smoke drifting hundreds of miles south has produced the worst air quality days in the city's recent record, and it has become a recurring spring-and-summer feature rather than a one-off.
What Canairy does for Des Moines
A clear verdict
Not just a number — a plain-English call for Des Moines: 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 Des Moines or across the country, on one screen.
What the air in Des Moines is doing next
| When | Expected air quality | Main pollutant |
|---|---|---|
| Today | Good | ozone |
Forecast from EPA AirNow for the Des Moines 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.
Des Moines' worst air day arrived from another country
On June 28, 2023, Des Moines recorded its worst air quality day in recent memory, as smoke from that year's record Canadian wildfire season pushed the AQI into the very unhealthy range and prompted local officials to urge residents to stay indoors. It wasn't an isolated spike — Iowa recorded more than 30 exceedances of national air quality standards in May 2023 alone, most tied to smoke pouring down from Quebec and Manitoba.
An Axios analysis of federal air-monitoring data published the following January found Des Moines residents breathed about 69% more fine particle pollution over the summer of 2023 than the 2014-2022 average, and the metro's average AQI for the year ran roughly 1.5 times higher than in 2022. The alerts haven't stopped since: the National Weather Service and Des Moines Register have continued flagging air quality alerts for the metro in the years after, including one issued July 19, 2026.
Flat farmland means no valley to trap pollution — but no shield from smoke either
Des Moines sits at the confluence of the Des Moines and Raccoon Rivers on the rolling, largely flat terrain of central Iowa, around 850 feet above sea level. There's no surrounding ridge line to box in car exhaust or industrial emissions the way a mountain valley does, and for years the region's ozone numbers reflected that — the metro sat on the Lung Association's cleanest-cities list as recently as the 2024 report. That is no longer where it ranks: the 2026 edition puts it 80th worst of 228 for ozone, on three unhealthy days a year.
That same open geography is exactly why smoke from Canada travels so easily here. Without terrain to block or divert it, a plume that forms over Quebec or Manitoba can ride southerly winds straight across the Great Lakes and settle over central Iowa within a day or two, arriving well after the fire itself has stopped making headlines. It's a pattern Des Moines shares with much of the Upper Midwest, where regional ozone and particle levels both spiked to some of the highest readings on record during May and June 2023.
A farm-state backdrop with its own dusty days
Even outside smoke season, Polk County isn't spotless. The 2026 State of the Air report gives it a D for short-term particle pollution on an average of 2.5 unhealthy days a year, ranking the metro 76th worst nationally for days when fine particles spike above healthy levels and 120th worst for year-round particle averages — though its year-round average does stay under the federal standard. Central Iowa's heavy row-crop agriculture — tillage, harvest dust, and grain handling around a metro that includes Johnston, headquarters of Pioneer Hi-Bred (now part of Corteva Agriscience) — adds to that backdrop in ways a single ozone grade doesn't capture.
None of this makes Des Moines a smoggy city day to day. But it does mean the read on any given afternoon depends on more than the season on the calendar — a still, hazy day in August can carry more fine particle pollution than a windy one in January, and the only way to know is to check the actual sensor reading rather than assume.
Des Moines air quality FAQ
What is the air quality in Des Moines right now?
As of September 14, 2026 at 7:10 AM CDT, the air quality in Des Moines, Iowa is AQI 10 — Good — with PM2.5 at 1.8 µg/m³, the median of 4 live PurpleAir sensors. Open the windows. Great for outdoor activity.
Why did Des Moines have such bad air in 2023?
Smoke from that year's record Canadian wildfire season drifted hundreds of miles south into central Iowa, pushing the AQI into the very unhealthy range on the worst day, June 28, 2023, and driving fine particle pollution about 69% above the metro's 2014-2022 summer average. Iowa recorded more than 30 exceedances of national air quality standards in May 2023 alone.
Does Des Moines still get wildfire smoke alerts?
Yes. Canadian wildfire smoke has kept reaching central Iowa in the years since 2023, and the National Weather Service and local media have continued issuing air quality alerts for the Des Moines metro, including one on July 19, 2026. Canairy's live sensor readings are the fastest way to tell whether a hazy day is actually a high-AQI day.
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 Des Moines, 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 Des Moines
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