Air Quality in Miami, Florida — Live

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

Live Miami AQI from nearby PurpleAir sensors loads when this page opens in a browser, along with a live sensor map covering Miami and Miami Beach, Coral Gables, Hialeah, North Miami.

Miami's air is good most of the year, and that is a real answer rather than a polite one. The EPA's Green Book lists no county in Florida as nonattainment for any federal air pollutant, and Miami-Dade is not an exception hiding inside that. What interrupts the good stretch is fire to the west and dust from the east. In June 2026 a lightning strike near the Metro West Detention Center started the Quarry 2 Fire, which grew to nearly 16,000 acres while the Coptic Fire took another 1,680 nearby; Krome Avenue closed westbound near Northwest 177th Avenue and U.S. 27, roughly 200 people were moved out of trailers in west Miami-Dade, and one resident described visibility down to about 100 feet. Then every summer the Sahara arrives, and the sky goes milky for days at a time.

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 fires are west of you, and the wind decides whether you notice

South Florida's dry stretch runs roughly November through April, and that is when the Everglades and the farmland along Krome Avenue are most ready to burn. But the June 2026 cluster shows it is not only a dry-season problem: four fires burned at once at the start of the wet season, ignited by lightning rather than by people. Quarry 2 reached nearly 16,000 acres, the Well Fire about 500, the Coptic Fire about 1,680, and a smaller 51-acre fire burned inside Everglades National Park. Roads closed in both Miami-Dade and Broward. Because the burning ground sits west of the built-up coast, whether any of it reaches your street is a question about that day's wind, not about the size of the fire. That is the gap a sensor a few miles from your house closes and a citywide average does not.

One thing worth ruling out: the cane smoke you may have read about is not Miami's. Around 400,000 acres of sugarcane in the Everglades Agricultural Area south of Lake Okeechobee are burned from fall through spring, and the towns that live with that smoke are Belle Glade, Pahokee, South Bay, Canal Point and Moore Haven, well inland and well north of Biscayne Bay. State restrictions dating to 1991 block those burns when the wind would push smoke east toward the Palm Beach suburbs, which is one of the reasons the practice is contested where it happens and largely invisible here.

The Sahara sends dust across the Atlantic every summer

The Saharan Air Layer is a mass of very dry, dusty air that forms over the Sahara in late spring, summer and early fall. NOAA's hurricane research division describes outbreaks ramping up in mid-June, peaking from late June to mid-August, then subsiding quickly after mid-August, with a fresh plume leaving Africa every three to five days at the height of the season. Each one is a layer roughly two to two and a half miles thick sitting about a mile above the surface, and it can reach as far west as Florida, Central America and Texas. It also suppresses clouds and thunderstorms, which is why some of the hottest, stillest days of a Miami summer are dusty ones. Joseph Prospero, professor emeritus at the University of Miami's Rosenstiel School, has said plainly that every year there is dust that comes into the area.

The June 2020 outbreak, nicknamed the Godzilla plume, is the one worth knowing about. Satellite records showed it as the most intense episode in two decades, and on 27 June about 40 percent of EPA monitoring stations across nine southern states exceeded the daily PM2.5 standard of 35 micrograms per cubic metre; the highest reading in the country that day was 73.9 at St. Marks, Florida. NASA reported PM2.5 reaching unhealthy levels, AQI 151 to 200, in Florida, Texas and Georgia. South Florida, oddly, got less of it than the Panhandle did, because a strong high near the Bahamas pushed the core of the plume south of the peninsula and into the southern Gulf first. That is the pattern to remember here: a big dust event in the news does not automatically mean dusty air over Miami, and the only way to know is to look at what the sensors are reading.

Miami's air record has actually improved

Miami-Dade, Broward and Palm Beach counties were all once designated nonattainment for the old one-hour ozone standard set in 1979, and all were redesignated to maintenance as the region came back into compliance. That standard has since been revoked and replaced by tighter eight-hour limits, and South Florida meets those too. Ozone and PM2.5 are the two pollutants that most commonly drive the AQI in Florida, according to the state Department of Environmental Protection, whose network is run jointly with nine local government air programmes.

None of that means every hour is clean everywhere. A fixed regulatory monitor is designed to characterise a region, not a block, and Miami is a city where the air a mile inland on a light westerly is genuinely different from the air on the bay. The sensible use of a page like this one is not to check whether Miami as a whole is in trouble, but to watch the few places you actually spend time.

Miami air quality FAQ

Why is there smoke in Miami today?

In Miami the first question is whether it is smoke or dust. Smoke usually comes from the west, from the Everglades and the agricultural land along Krome Avenue, and it has a direction and a smell; in June 2026 four fires burned there at once, the largest reaching nearly 16,000 acres after a lightning strike, and Krome Avenue closed. Saharan dust behaves differently. It hazes the entire sky rather than arriving from one side, it turns the sun orange, and it shows up between mid-June and mid-August when the Saharan Air Layer is active. If the whole horizon is milky and there is no smell, it is far more likely the desert than a fire.

What is the air quality in Miami right now?

This page shows the live AQI for Miami, calculated from PurpleAir sensors around the city and updated continuously. Miami-Dade is wide enough that one number rarely covers it. On a light westerly during a brush fire, Kendall and Sweetwater can read very differently from Miami Beach, so it is worth saving the specific addresses you care about rather than watching a single citywide figure.

Does Saharan dust actually affect breathing?

It can. Naresh Kumar of the University of Miami's Miller School of Medicine has warned that people with asthma and COPD face an increased risk of flare-ups during dust events, and that the dust carries bacteria which can raise the risk of allergic reactions and infections. The particles are fine enough to register on a PM2.5 sensor, which is why a dusty week shows up on this page as a rise in the reading rather than as anything exotic. If you are in a sensitive group, treating a heavy dust day like a moderate smoke day is a reasonable default.

Is the haze from sugarcane burning south of Lake Okeechobee?

Almost certainly not, in Miami. The roughly 400,000 acres of sugarcane in the Everglades Agricultural Area are burned from fall to spring, and the smoke settles on the Glades towns of Belle Glade, Pahokee, South Bay, Canal Point and Moore Haven. That is a long way inland and well north of Miami, and since 1991 the state has restricted those burns when the wind would carry smoke east toward the Palm Beach suburbs. It is a real and heavily argued issue where it happens; it is not the source of a hazy afternoon in Coral Gables.

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.