Air Quality in Huntsville, Alabama — Live

Live readings from PurpleAir sensors across Huntsville — with free alerts when summer ozone or a smoke day pushes the air past healthy.

Live Huntsville AQI from nearby PurpleAir sensors loads when this page opens in a browser, along with a live sensor map covering Huntsville and Madison, Decatur, Athens, Owens Cross Roads.

Madison County is one of Alabama's official air quality success stories — the EPA lists it as in attainment for every pollutant it regulates, and most days the AQI here sits comfortably in the Good range. The exceptions are narrow and fairly predictable: a run of hot, hazy, storm-free days in July and August when ozone builds up faster than the valley can clear it, and the rare summer when smoke drifts in from somewhere else entirely, like the Canadian wildfires that triggered air quality alerts here in June and July 2023.

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.

Huntsville sits in a bowl of low mountains

The city sits at about 640 feet in the Tennessee Valley, but it isn't open flatland — the National Weather Service describes Huntsville as "almost surrounded by the foothills of the Appalachian Mountains," with ridges running 1,200 to 1,600 feet high roughly 14 miles to the northeast, east, and southeast. Monte Sano Mountain, at 1,621 feet, rises directly on the city's east side and draws hikers precisely for the view back down into the valley.

That ring of terrain is scenic, but it also limits how fast the air over Huntsville turns over. The Tennessee River runs about seven miles south of downtown, and the valley opening to the west stays relatively flat, so on calm days the exchange of air happens mostly along that western corridor rather than straight up and out. It isn't a Los Angeles-style basin, but it's enough shelter that pollution built up locally doesn't always clear on its own.

Summer heat and humidity are what actually move the needle

Huntsville's ozone problem, such as it is, is a summer one. July and August highs regularly reach the low 90s, and the area's humid subtropical climate pushes heat index values past 100 degrees on many afternoons. That combination of heat, sunlight, and vehicle exhaust from commuters funneling into Redstone Arsenal and Cummings Research Park along Research Park Boulevard and I-565 is the recipe ground-level ozone needs. Afternoon thunderstorms interrupt the pattern on roughly a third of summer days, which is part of why Madison County has stayed within EPA ozone limits even when the numbers have run close.

The margin hasn't always been comfortable. Under the older 8-hour ozone standard, the Huntsville area's design value in the late 1990s measured 84 parts per billion — close enough to the federal line that ADEM prepared a possible nonattainment recommendation for the area in 2009. Madison County was never formally designated nonattainment and remains in attainment today, but it's a reminder that Huntsville's good air is a function of favorable weather and traffic patterns holding, not a guarantee written in stone.

The one real exception: smoke that wasn't from here at all

In June 2023, smoke from wildfires burning more than a thousand miles away in Quebec drifted far enough south to put Madison and Morgan counties under an air quality alert that ran until 9 p.m. on June 9. It came back the following month — in July 2023, ADEM issued another alert for Madison County as a second round of Canadian wildfire smoke pushed local AQI into Unhealthy for Sensitive Groups territory, prompting the Alabama Department of Public Health to advise people with asthma or COPD to keep an eye on conditions.

Neither event came close to what cities in the Northeast saw that summer — Huntsville isn't wildfire country, and there's no local fire season to plan around the way there is out West. But 2023 was a useful reminder that smoke doesn't need to start nearby to affect the air you're breathing, and that the AQI on a given July afternoon can be driven by something burning a thousand miles north rather than anything happening in Madison County.

Huntsville air quality FAQ

What is the air quality in Huntsville right now?

This page shows the current AQI for Huntsville, calculated from PurpleAir sensors across Madison County and updated continuously. The map below shows every live sensor, so you can check the reading closest to your own neighborhood.

Why did Huntsville have air quality alerts in 2023?

Smoke from wildfires burning in Quebec drifted into north Alabama twice that year, triggering ADEM air quality alerts for Madison County in June and July 2023 that pushed AQI into Unhealthy for Sensitive Groups territory. It was an unusual event for a region that doesn't have its own wildfire season — the smoke came from more than a thousand miles away.

Why does Huntsville's air get worse in summer?

Ozone, not smoke, is Huntsville's main summer concern. Hot, humid days with highs in the low 90s and heat index values over 100 degrees, combined with exhaust from commuters heading to Redstone Arsenal and Cummings Research Park, create the conditions ground-level ozone needs. Afternoon thunderstorms usually break the pattern before it gets serious, which is part of why Madison County has stayed in attainment for ozone even though its design values have run close to the federal limit in the past.

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 Huntsville data come from?

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

Get Canairy free on Google Play.