Air Quality in Marysville, Washington — Live

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

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

Marysville's air problem is not a fire season. It is a time of day. Community PurpleAir sensors around the city show that heavy wood stove use produces consistent spikes in fine particle pollution in the evening, night after night through the cold months, and Snohomish County's own Climate Vulnerability Tool puts Marysville alongside Darrington and Monroe as the places in the county with some of the worst air quality. The American Lung Association has graded Snohomish County an F. None of that describes a city under permanent haze; it describes a city where the number at 8 PM in January can be several times the number at 2 PM the same day.

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.

Downtown sits five feet above the slough

The shape of the ground here works against still winter nights. Downtown Marysville sits on the bank of Ebey Slough about five feet above sea level, on the north edge of the Snohomish River delta, and the land climbs from there to around 160 feet near Smokey Point and over 465 feet in the eastern highlands. Interstate 5 and the Tulalip Reservation form the western edge, Ebey Slough the southern one. On a cold, clear evening, cool air slides off the higher ground and settles on the delta floor, and whatever was released down there settles with it.

That is why an evening reading in one part of Marysville can be so different from another. Smoke from a neighbor's stove does not spread evenly across a city with 450 feet of relief across it and a river delta at the bottom. It pools where the cold air pools. If you live low, near the slough or the flats, the sensor closest to your street is telling you something a city-wide average cannot.

The county keeps putting Marysville on the list

Marysville is one of the places Snohomish County's Climate Vulnerability Tool identifies as having some of the worst air quality in the county, and the pattern behind it is old stoves. Graeme Carvlin of the Puget Sound Clean Air Agency put it plainly: there are still a lot of older stoves out there. The agency pays residents $500 to swap a wood stove for gas, electric, or a modern unit that meets federal standards, and it has recycled more than 8,000 stoves across Snohomish, King and Pierce counties over the past sixteen years.

There is a longer-term effort as well. The Snohomish Conservation District has partnered with Marysville, Everett and the Tulalip Tribes on a five-year push to grow the tree canopy, and has already planted thousands of trees. Canopy will not clear a January inversion, but the direction of travel is the point: the wood smoke here is a stock of old appliances being worked through slowly, not a single source anyone can switch off.

What a Stage 2 burn ban actually stops

Marysville is in Snohomish County, and the Puget Sound Clean Air Agency uses a tighter trigger here than it does around Seattle. A Stage 1 ban is called when the 24-hour average of fine particles is expected to exceed 30 micrograms per cubic meter within 72 hours, against 35 micrograms within 48 hours for King and Kitsap counties. Stage 1 stops fireplaces, uncertified stoves and uncertified inserts, and stops all outdoor burning including recreational fires.

Stage 2 is the one worth knowing about, because it catches the appliances people assume are exempt. Under Stage 2 no wood-burning fireplace, wood stove, insert or pellet stove may be used at all, certified or not, unless it is your only source of heat and you hold an approved exemption. Under both stages it is illegal to produce visible smoke even from a device you are allowed to run. If your home heat is a wood stove, the practical move is knowing a ban is coming before it lands rather than after.

Marysville air quality FAQ

Why is there smoke in Marysville today?

Check the season and the hour. Between roughly November and February the answer is usually wood smoke from stoves and fireplaces close by. PurpleAir sensors around Marysville show a consistent evening spike driven by heavy wood stove use, and it is worst on cold, still nights when the air over the delta stops moving. In July, August and September the more likely answer is wildfire smoke that has drifted in from fires well outside Snohomish County, which arrives across the whole region at once rather than in one neighborhood.

What is the air quality in Marysville right now?

The map on this page reads live PM2.5 from PurpleAir sensors around Marysville rather than one number for all of Snohomish County. That distinction matters most in the evening, when a low-lying street near Ebey Slough and a house up toward the eastern highlands can be reading very differently at the same moment. Coverage across Marysville and Tulalip is decent but not dense, so pick the sensor nearest you rather than the citywide average, and Canairy will turn it into a plain-English verdict.

Why is Marysville worse than the rest of Snohomish County?

It is mostly residential wood burning meeting unhelpful geography. Snohomish County's Climate Vulnerability Tool names Marysville, along with Darrington and Monroe, among the places in the county with the worst air quality, and community sensor data attributes the recurring evening pollution spikes here to high wood stove use. Downtown sits about five feet above sea level on the edge of the Snohomish River delta, which is exactly the kind of low, flat ground where cold air and smoke settle overnight instead of blowing through.

Can I get help replacing an old wood stove in Marysville?

Yes. The Puget Sound Clean Air Agency runs a change-out program that pays $500 to residents who replace a wood stove with gas, electric, or a newer wood stove that meets federal standards. More than 8,000 stoves have been recycled through it across Snohomish, King and Pierce counties over the past sixteen years. The agency's own view is that plenty of older stoves are still in service, which is a large part of why evening readings in Marysville behave the way they do.

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.