Air Quality in Glendale, California — Live

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

Live Glendale AQI from nearby PurpleAir sensors loads when this page opens in a browser, along with a live sensor map covering Glendale and Montrose, La Crescenta, Burbank, Eagle Rock, Atwater Village, La Cañada Flintridge.

Glendale is built up against a mountain range and threaded by freeways, and both facts show up in the air. The city sits about 10 miles north of downtown Los Angeles at an elevation of 522 feet, and it lies primarily in the Verdugo Mountains region with only a small portion in the San Fernando Valley. Interstate 5 runs along the west side, State Route 134 crosses east to west, and State Route 2 — the Glendale Freeway — joins SR-134 right at the Los Angeles-Glendale line. Above all of that, the Verdugos rise to 3,126 feet at Verdugo Peak: eight miles long and a little over three miles wide, an island of brush surrounded on every side by houses.

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 mountains at the top of town

The Verdugo Mountains are the reason Glendale's air behaves differently from the flat parts of the basin. The range marks where the borders of the San Gabriel Valley and the San Fernando Valley meet, and its southern front forms part of the northeastern edge of the San Fernando Valley. The Crescenta Valley sits in the gap between the Verdugos and the San Gabriel Mountains a mile or two north — a narrow trough that catches whatever the wind pushes into it. Burbank, Glendale, Pasadena and La Cañada Flintridge all touch the range, with La Crescenta-Montrose and Sunland-Tujunga adjoining it.

The La Tuna Fire showed what that means in practice. It began shortly before 1:30 p.m. on 1 September 2017 in La Tuna Canyon and burned 7,194 acres across the Verdugos before containment on 9 September, destroying five residences and five outbuildings and forcing the evacuation of more than 300 homes in Burbank, Glendale and Sunland-Tujunga. Interstate 210 was closed between Lowell Avenue and Sunland Boulevard and did not fully reopen until Monday 4 September. On 2 September, South Coast AQMD issued a smoke advisory for Burbank and the eastern San Fernando Valley, telling residents to stay indoors as the smoke became trapped beneath an atmospheric inversion. That last part is the recurring problem: the smoke does not simply blow through.

Three freeways and an old power plant

Traffic is the everyday, unglamorous half of Glendale's air. I-5 hugs the western boundary near the Los Angeles River's Glendale Narrows, SR-134 runs the width of the city, and SR-2 comes down out of the foothills to meet it. Vehicle exhaust is what feeds the photochemical reaction that makes ozone on hot afternoons, and it is also the main local source of the fine particles that a PurpleAir sensor picks up on a day with no fire anywhere. How close you are to one of those corridors changes your numbers more than most people expect, which is why a citywide average is less useful here than a reading from a sensor on your own street.

Glendale also generates a share of its own electricity inside the city. The Grayson Power Plant, run by Glendale Water and Power at the intersection of Fairmont Avenue and San Fernando Road, has been operating since 1941, and the majority of its equipment and facilities were completed between 1941 and 1977. The city's repowering project would replace those units — all except Unit 9, built in 2003 — with a combination of new combined-cycle and simple-cycle natural gas turbines, taking capacity from 238 MW to 260 MW. In December 2024 the California Court of Appeal upheld the city's final environmental impact report for the project.

January 2025, from eight miles away

Glendale did not burn in January 2025, and it still spent a week living in the smoke. The Eaton Fire started on the evening of 7 January in Eaton Canyon, roughly eight miles east of Glendale, and went on to burn 14,021 acres. Santa Ana gusts hit 100 mph at Mount Lukens in the eastern San Gabriels, directly upwind, and smoke from the fire moved into central and western Los Angeles, reaching communities far from the burn area. Air quality index readings across the region climbed past 200 into the Very Unhealthy category.

Glendale Unified School District closed through Friday 10 January, with officials citing the accessibility of roadways and air quality. Los Angeles County Public Health extended its smoke advisory through 5 p.m. on Saturday 11 January and gave the guidance that holds for any bad-air day here: close windows and doors, run air conditioning on recirculate, use a HEPA air purifier, limit physical exertion indoors and out, and wear an N95 or P100 mask if you have to go outside. Children, older adults, pregnant people and anyone with a respiratory or heart condition were told to stay indoors as much as possible.

Glendale air quality FAQ

Why is there smoke in Glendale today?

Usually a fire somewhere in the ranges around the basin, and Glendale's position between the Verdugos and the San Gabriels means the smoke tends to settle rather than pass through. The La Tuna Fire in September 2017 burned 7,194 acres in the Verdugo Mountains and prompted a South Coast AQMD smoke advisory on 2 September for Burbank and the eastern San Fernando Valley, with residents told to stay indoors because an atmospheric inversion had trapped the smoke close to the ground. In January 2025 the Eaton Fire burned about eight miles east and pushed smoke across central and western Los Angeles, with regional AQI readings passing 200.

What is the air quality in Glendale right now?

This page shows the live AQI for Glendale, calculated from PurpleAir sensors around the city and updated continuously. Glendale climbs from about 500 feet near the Los Angeles River up into the Verdugo foothills, and it has three freeways along and through it, so a reading near I-5 and one up in the hills above Montrose can differ noticeably on the same afternoon. Watching the sensors closest to where you actually spend your time is what makes the number useful.

Does living near the 5, the 134 or the 2 affect my air?

Proximity to a busy freeway is one of the clearest local influences on the air you breathe. Vehicle exhaust supplies both the fine particles a sensor measures directly and the ingredients for ozone, which forms on hot, sunny afternoons. Glendale has I-5 along its western edge, SR-134 running across it, and SR-2 dropping in from the foothills to meet SR-134 at the Los Angeles-Glendale line. The practical answer is not to guess: put a sensor reading in front of you for the block you live on rather than relying on a citywide figure.

Are the Verdugo Mountains a wildfire risk for Glendale?

The range is an eight-mile-long, three-mile-wide stretch of brush completely surrounded by urban development, and Glendale is one of four cities that touch it. The La Tuna Fire of 1 September 2017 burned 7,194 acres there before it was contained on 9 September, destroyed five residences and five outbuildings, closed Interstate 210 between Lowell Avenue and Sunland Boulevard, and forced more than 300 homes in Burbank, Glendale and Sunland-Tujunga to evacuate. It is also worth knowing the range has burned before: fires swept the Verdugo Mountains, San Rafael Hills and Chevy Chase in 1964.

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.