Air Quality in Everett, Washington — Live

Live readings from PurpleAir sensors across Everett — with free alerts the moment the air turns.

Live Everett AQI from nearby PurpleAir sensors loads when this page opens in a browser, along with a live sensor map covering Everett and Marysville, Mukilteo, Lake Stevens, Lynnwood.

Most days in Everett the air is fine. The problem is the days that aren't, and they arrive in two seasons that have almost nothing in common. In December 2025 the Washington Department of Ecology published a community report naming Everett one of sixteen places in the state that are overburdened and highly impacted by air pollution, specifically for short-term exposure to fine particulate matter. The boundary Ecology drew runs from the Snohomish River in the north down to Paine Field in the south, with Interstate 5 as its eastern edge — most of the city, in other words. The state's Puget Sound air quality indicator is blunt about what drives the spikes in this part of Snohomish County: a combination of moderate wildfire smoke impacts in summer and smoke from residential wood combustion during wintertime stagnation events.

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.

Why the burn bans start in November

Wood smoke is the winter half of it. The Puget Sound Clean Air Agency, which regulates air in King, Kitsap, Pierce and Snohomish counties, states it directly: smoke from burning wood is a main contributor to harmful fine particle pollution in the region. Bans typically occur during fall and winter months and usually last a few days, though they can run a week or more. Snohomish County trips a ban earlier than Seattle does — a Stage 1 ban is issued here when PM2.5 is predicted to exceed a 24-hour average of 30 micrograms per cubic meter within 72 hours, while King and Kitsap counties wait for 35 micrograms within 48 hours.

You can see the effect a few miles north of the city line. Washington's Puget Sound air quality indicator measures the 98th-percentile PM2.5 at every monitor in the region against a state healthy air goal of 20 micrograms per cubic meter. Marysville is on that short list of sites that miss it, year after year. In 2021 it was one of only three Puget Sound communities to record a 98th-percentile concentration over the goal, alongside Darrington and South Tacoma, and in 2024 the Marysville site was the only one in the region to exceed it. Because the goal is set at the eighth-highest day of the year, missing it means impaired air on at least eight days.

Boeing, Paine Field and the I-5 corridor

Boeing's Everett plant sits on the north side of Paine Field and is the world's largest building by volume. In Ecology's 2025 accounting it is the only greenhouse gas reporting facility inside the Everett community boundary, and it is flagged as a major source of criteria air pollutants under the state's air operating permit program. Its reported emissions were 69,711 metric tons of CO2 equivalent in 2022 and 66,124 in 2023, a 5.1 percent year-to-year decrease. Everett is also a working industrial city in a way its neighbors are not: nearly one in ten workers here are employed in construction and extraction occupations, the highest share among the sixteen communities Ecology identified.

The airfield got busier in a different way in March 2019, when scheduled passenger flights resumed from a new terminal, and 580,000 passengers used it in 2024. Day to day, though, traffic is the larger source. Ecology's inventory puts mobile-source emissions in the Everett community at 356,998 metric tons of CO2 equivalent in 2021, about 4.3 tons per resident, and I-5 forms the community's eastern boundary the whole way through town.

What the monitor on Beverly Park Road actually reads

Everett got its first regulatory air monitor under the Climate Commitment Act, on Beverly Park Road, and it measures both PM2.5 and PM10. The first partial year of data, 2024, is reassuring. The 24-hour PM2.5 98th percentile came in at 13.9 micrograms per cubic meter against a federal limit of 35. The annual mean was 4.30 against a limit of 9.0. There were no PM10 exceedances at all. That is what a normal year looks like here, and it is worth saying plainly: the baseline air in Everett is good.

Both things are true at the same time, though. Ecology also found Everett has slightly elevated rates of asthma (11.8 percent of adults against 11.4 percent statewide), COPD and diabetes, and a lower life expectancy than Washington as a whole. Its modelling attributes roughly 20 deaths a year from any cause to annual PM2.5 exposure in the community, along with 19 to 36 asthma-related emergency department visits a year linked to day-to-day PM2.5, 14 of them among children. The bad days here are few. That is exactly why it is worth knowing the moment one starts.

Everett air quality FAQ

Why is there smoke in Everett today?

It depends on the season, and the two causes are close to opposites. From roughly July into September it is usually wildfire smoke drifting in from fires well outside Snohomish County. From November through February it is far more likely to be wood smoke from fireplaces and stoves in your own neighborhood, pinned down by a cold, still inversion. Washington's Puget Sound air quality indicator describes the elevated readings in Snohomish County as a combination of moderate wildfire smoke impacts in summer and smoke from residential wood combustion during wintertime stagnation events. That seasonal split is why the Puget Sound Clean Air Agency calls its burn bans in the cold months rather than during fire season.

What is the air quality in Everett right now?

This page shows the live AQI for Everett, calculated from PurpleAir sensors around the city and updated continuously. Everett's only regulatory monitor sits on Beverly Park Road, which is a long way from most of the city, so a neighborhood sensor a few blocks from your house often tells you more about what you are actually breathing than a single citywide number does.

Why does Everett get a burn ban when Seattle doesn't?

Because the trigger is different. The Puget Sound Clean Air Agency issues a Stage 1 burn ban in Snohomish and Pierce counties when PM2.5 is predicted to exceed a 24-hour average of 30 micrograms per cubic meter within 72 hours. In King and Kitsap counties the threshold is 35 micrograms within 48 hours. Snohomish County also burns more wood for heat than the denser parts of the region, and the monitor in Marysville has repeatedly been one of the few Puget Sound sites to miss Washington's healthy air goal of 20 micrograms per cubic meter.

Does the Boeing plant or Paine Field affect Everett's air?

Boeing Commercial Airplanes in Everett is the only greenhouse gas reporting facility inside the community boundary Ecology mapped, and it is designated a major source of criteria air pollutants under the air operating permit program. Its reported emissions have been falling — 69,711 metric tons of CO2 equivalent in 2022 down to 66,124 in 2023. Paine Field resumed scheduled passenger flights in March 2019 and handled 580,000 passengers in 2024. Neither shows up in the monitoring data the way winter wood smoke and summer wildfire smoke do, which is what Ecology flagged Everett for.

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.