Air Quality in Madras, Oregon — Live

Live readings from PurpleAir sensors across Madras — with free alerts the moment smoke moves in.

Live Madras AQI from nearby PurpleAir sensors loads when this page opens in a browser, along with a live sensor map covering Madras and Culver, Metolius, Warm Springs, Terrebonne.

Most days on the Madras plateau, the air is high-desert clear — that's the whole point of living at 2,240 feet with the Cascades on the horizon. But late summer can change that fast, and the smoke doesn't have to come from anywhere near town: fires on the forested slopes west of Warm Springs and grass fires in the dry country south of town have both put Madras under smoke in recent years.

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.

Madras sits between two kinds of fire country

To the west, beyond the farms, the land climbs through the Warm Springs Reservation into the forested Cascades — and that's where the Lionshead Fire started in August 2020. Within weeks it had spread across the Mount Jefferson Wilderness, closed 40 miles of the Pacific Crest Trail, and put parts of Jefferson County under Level 1 and Level 2 evacuation notices while smoke drifted over the plateau.

To the south and east it's a different threat: dry grass and juniper that can burn fast. In July 2021 the Grandview Fire ignited on the Crooked River National Grassland southwest of Culver and grew to 4,000 acres in less than a day, forcing evacuations in Jefferson and Deschutes counties and prompting the governor to invoke the Emergency Conflagration Act.

September 2020, when the whole state's smoke arrived

During the September 2020 Labor Day fires, smoke from the Lionshead, Beachie Creek, and Riverside fires settled over Central Oregon, and Oregon DEQ's monitoring recorded unhealthy air in Madras and Redmond. Sisters, thirty miles south, logged seven days of outright hazardous air that year.

That's the lesson Madras keeps relearning: the fires that foul the air here are often on the far side of the Cascade crest, fifty or more miles away. The evacuation map says nothing about what you're breathing — only the monitors do.

Farm-town air on the high desert

Madras is the center of roughly 60,000 acres of irrigated farmland, and Jefferson County grows most of the world's hybrid carrot seed along with bluegrass seed, garlic seed, and mint. A working farm valley means dust in harvest season, and a dry high-desert summer means the surrounding grass and juniper are ready to burn by July.

A single citywide number also hides a lot out here. Madras, Culver, Metolius, and Warm Springs can be breathing noticeably different air at the same moment, which is why Canairy reads the PurpleAir sensors spread across the plateau instead of one distant station — the reading you see comes from sensors near the places you actually saved.

Madras air quality FAQ

What is the air quality in Madras right now?

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

Why does Madras get smoky in late summer?

August and September are Central Oregon's peak fire months. Smoke can come from forest fires west of the Cascade crest — like the Lionshead Fire in 2020, which burned for months on the Warm Springs Reservation — or from fast-moving grass fires close to town, like the 2021 Grandview Fire near Culver. When regional smoke settles over the high desert, it can linger for days.

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.

Where does Canairy's Madras data come from?

Readings come from PurpleAir's network of laser particle sensors around Madras, Culver, and Metolius, 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.

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.