Air Quality in Evansville, Indiana — Live
Live readings from PurpleAir sensors across Evansville — with free alerts when the air in the Tri-State area changes.
AQI 54 from 2 PurpleAir sensors · Holding steady · data from PurpleAir
As of , the air quality in Evansville, Indiana is AQI 54 — Moderate and holding steady — with PM2.5 at 10.9 µg/m³, the median of 2 live PurpleAir sensors reading 52 to 57. Canairy's verdict: Mostly clear.
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
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Sensor by sensor in Evansville
The sensors Canairy reads in Evansville agree right now — all 2 sit in the Moderate band, a 5-point spread — so the city-wide number is a fair description of the whole area today.
| From city center | AQI | Category |
|---|---|---|
| 1.5 mi NNW | 52 | Moderate |
| 9.5 mi WSW | 57 | Moderate |
For most of the year, Evansville's air quality sits in the Good-to-Moderate range you'd expect from a mid-sized Ohio River city. What makes this corner of Indiana different is what surrounds it: Vanderburgh, Posey, and Warrick counties sit inside one of the densest clusters of coal-fired power generation left in the Midwest, and a 2016 USA Today investigation found fine-particle pollution here running almost as high as Manhattan's.
Summer is when it's most likely to matter — hot, humid, stagnant days give the region's power plants and refineries more room to cook up ozone and haze before a front finally clears it out.
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What the air in Evansville is doing next
| When | Expected air quality | Main pollutant |
|---|---|---|
| Today | Good | PM2.5 |
Southern Regions: Ozone levels were a mix of good and moderate Wednesday and Thursday and PM2.5 levels were moderate. A weak cold front is going to move through the region as of Friday morning. This is only bringing mostly sunny to partly cloudy conditions with high level clouds and a wind shift to the NE. Despite this, generally warm and dry conditions are forecast to prevail in the mid to upper 70's. Clouds increase on Saturday with partly to mostly cloudy conditions as rain is possible Halloween night into Sunday due to increasing moisture from the SW and a weak system at the surface. The tropical moisture is actually the remnants of Tropical system Vance. Scattered showers are possible with mostly cloudy conditions. Sunday the cooler weather pattern will begin with low clouds and rain possible. Monday night a strong upper low and surface cold front are forecast to move through with chances of rain and cloudy conditions. Temperatures are forecast to be upper 70's Friday, mid to low 70's Saturday, mid-60's Sunday and upper 60's Monday. Dewpoints are forecast to be in the 50's Friday, around 50 degrees Saturday, 60's Sunday and Monday. Winds are forecast to be calm Friday morning with ENE winds 0-5 MPH Friday afternoon, ESE 0-10 MPH Saturday, SSE 5-15 MPH Sunday and Monday. The NOAA 06Z BC model for PM2.5 forecasts good levels Friday through Sunday for SE and moderate for SW. The Canadian model shows mostly good levels for that entire forecast period. I think moderate is possible for SW today, but beyond that a mix seems more possible. Moderate is not out of the question with the tropical moisture and southerly flow with higher RH and low wind speeds. Due to all this, thinking moderate for both Friday with moderate possible for SW before the rain and a mix of good and moderate for SE. Logic behind this choice is the flow of moisture, frontal angle and precipitation chances; I think a fresh air mass Monday with new air flow with drop levels back to good. The NOAA 06Z BC model for ozone predicts moderate ozone for SW Friday with otherwise good ozone for Friday through Sunday for all. The Canadian model forecasts moderate for SW and good for SE Friday and good levels for all beyond that. Moderate ozone seems possible today for perhaps both SE and SW depending on the angle and timing of the cold front. tomorrow more good levels through the weekend due to the cold front, building cloud cover, and rain chances. Mixing heights are forecast around 3,700 ft. Friday and 1,800 ft. Saturday.
Forecast from EPA AirNow for the Evansville 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.
Evansville sits inside one of the Midwest's densest coal corridors
Six large coal-fired power plant complexes have operated within about 30 miles of Evansville — an unusual concentration for a metro area this size. The closest is CenterPoint Energy's A.B. Brown Generating Station, just 5 miles southwest of downtown on the Ohio River; its coal units ran until October 2023, when they were replaced by natural gas turbines that came online in 2025. Roughly 30 miles downriver to the east sits American Electric Power's Rockport Generating Station, a 2,600-megawatt plant with the tallest smokestack in Indiana at 1,038 feet — both of its units are scheduled to retire by the end of 2028 under a settlement AEP reached with the EPA and the Sierra Club.
The cluster doesn't stop at the city limits. Alcoa's aluminum smelter near Newburgh, Evansville's easternmost suburb, has run its own power-hungry operation since 1957, and Henderson, Kentucky — about 10 miles south across the Ohio River — layers in its own aluminum production and coal mining, with more than 2.8 million tons of coal produced in Henderson County in a recent year. None of this means Evansville's air is bad every day, but it explains why the region's baseline has historically run higher than a typical Midwest city its size.
A 2016 investigation put a number on it
USA Today's 2016 investigation "Meet America's Super Polluters" singled out Vanderburgh County, finding fine-particle (PM2.5) levels almost as high as Manhattan, New York City — a striking comparison for a metro of roughly 180,000 people. The finding reflected the compounding effect of the coal plants ringing the city plus the industrial corridor just west in Posey County.
Mount Vernon, about 15 miles west along the river, is home to a CountryMark oil refinery processing more than 20,000 barrels of crude oil a day and a SABIC plastics plant (built originally as a GE Plastics facility) — both permitted industrial sources sitting in the same airshed Evansville can end up downwind of. It's this combination of point sources, not any single smokestack, that has kept Evansville's particle numbers higher than the city's size alone would suggest.
Summer heat and river-valley air do the rest
Evansville sits in a shallow bend of the Ohio River that locals have long nicknamed the "Crescent Valley" — low rolling hills around a city that sits at just 384 feet of elevation. The area's humid subtropical climate brings hot, sticky summers, with July averaging near 78°F, which are exactly the conditions that help nitrogen oxides and VOCs from the surrounding plants and highway traffic cook into ground-level ozone.
On still, sunny summer afternoons, that combination can push ozone into the range the EPA and the American Lung Association's annual State of the Air report track when they grade metro areas for ozone and particle-pollution days. Winters are easier on air quality — cold fronts move through the valley and clear things out fast — but summer is when it actually pays to check the number instead of assuming it's fine.
Evansville air quality FAQ
What is the air quality in Evansville right now?
As of November 2, 2026 at 8:38 AM CST, the air quality in Evansville, Indiana is AQI 54 — Moderate — with PM2.5 at 10.9 µg/m³, the median of 2 live PurpleAir sensors. Sensitive groups may want to take it slower outside.
Why does Evansville's air quality lag other Midwest cities its size?
Vanderburgh County sits inside one of the region's densest clusters of coal-fired power generation, with plants like A.B. Brown and AEP's Rockport station within about 30 miles, plus an oil refinery and a plastics plant just west in Mount Vernon. A 2016 USA Today investigation found fine-particle pollution here running almost as high as Manhattan's, driven by that industrial concentration rather than any single source.
Does Evansville still have coal plants running nearby?
Fewer than it used to. A.B. Brown's coal units, five miles southwest of the city, were retired in October 2023 and replaced with natural gas turbines in 2025. AEP's Rockport Generating Station, about 30 miles east, is scheduled to retire both of its units by the end of 2028. Until then, both remain part of the regional airshed Canairy tracks for Evansville.
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 2 curated PurpleAir sensors Canairy tracks in and around Evansville, 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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