Air Quality in Minneapolis, Minnesota — Live
Live readings from PurpleAir sensors across Minneapolis — with free alerts the moment smoke drifts in.
AQI 52 from 4 PurpleAir sensors · Holding steady · data from PurpleAir
As of , the air quality in Minneapolis, Minnesota is AQI 52 — Moderate and holding steady — with PM2.5 at 9.9 µg/m³, the median of 4 live PurpleAir sensors reading 44 to 54. Canairy's verdict: Mostly clear.
For scale, that PM2.5 reading is below the World Health Organization's 24-hour guideline of 15 µg/m³. The WHO figure is a daily average and this is a live reading, so read it as a sense of magnitude rather than a formal exceedance — a brief spike and a bad day are not the same thing. More on the WHO guidelines
Pollen today in Minneapolis: weeds pollen is the strongest of the three at a very high level, from Google's pollen forecast. Canairy shows the tree, grass and weed forecast beside the air reading on every plan, including the free one.
Free to download · Live data from PurpleAir & public monitors
Live PurpleAir sensor map for Minneapolis and St. Paul, Bloomington, Edina, Richfield. Every dot is a real sensor, color-coded by current air quality.
Sensor by sensor in Minneapolis
The sensors Canairy reads in Minneapolis are 10 AQI points apart right now, from Good to Moderate, which is the whole reason one city-wide number can mislead you: the median describes air you may not be standing in.
| From city center | AQI | Category |
|---|---|---|
| 3.3 mi SSW | 44 | Good |
| 4.5 mi SW | 54 | Moderate |
| 5.1 mi SE | 52 | Moderate |
| 5.9 mi SSE | 52 | Moderate |
For most of the year the air in Minneapolis is clean, but the city sits directly downwind of Canada's boreal forests, and when those forests burn the smoke comes straight here. The last few summers have made that unmistakable: a record 22 air quality alerts in 2023, the smokiest summer in half a century in 2025, and in July 2026 the first Hazardous-category alerts the Twin Cities have ever seen.
What Canairy does for Minneapolis
A clear verdict
Not just a number — a plain-English call for Minneapolis: open the windows, or keep them shut.
Smoke alerts
A push or text the moment the air crosses your threshold — and again when it clears.
A heads-up before it's bad
Trend alerts catch the air turning, so you can close up the house before the smoke settles in.
Every place you care about
Home, work, the kids' school — across Minneapolis or across the country, on one screen.
What the air in Minneapolis is doing next
| When | AQI | Expected air quality | Main pollutant |
|---|---|---|---|
| Today | 43 | Good | ozone |
| Tomorrow | — | Good | ozone |
| Monday | — | Good | ozone |
| Tuesday | — | Good | ozone |
| Wednesday | — | Good | ozone |
Wildfire activity across the western U.S. and Canada continues to wind down and smoke-free conditions are expected to continue across our region as we approach the end of summer. Low-level clouds have lingered across the Twin Cities longer than expected on Friday and this has kept ozone lower than was forecast yesterday. However, air quality may still reach the Yellow (Moderate) category across the southern Twin Cities suburbs on Friday. Air quality should remain in the Green (Good) category for the rest of the state. High pressure will build across Ontario on Saturday, and this will produce northeast winds across MN. Cooler and cleaner air will move into the region, and air quality should be in the Green category statewide Saturday. Widespread clouds and scattered thunderstorms will return to the region on Sunday and Monday. Air quality should remain in the Green category statewide through Monday.
Forecast from EPA AirNow for the Twin Cities reporting area. Canairy watches the live sensors against it and tells you when the air actually crosses your threshold, rather than leaving you to check.
Minneapolis is first in line for Canadian wildfire smoke
Minnesota's northern position puts the Twin Cities among the first big U.S. metros to catch smoke plumes rolling south out of Canada's burning boreal forest. In 2023 that produced a record 22 air quality alerts covering 52 days, shattering the old record of 13 alerts across 42 days set in 2021. Fourteen of those were red alerts, meaning unhealthy for everyone, in a state that used to see a red day roughly once a decade. It was also the year the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency issued its first-ever combined fine-particle-and-ozone alert from wildfire smoke.
The single worst day was June 14, 2023, when the Twin Cities daily average AQI reached 175, the highest daily average since AQI records began in 1980. Smoke was so thick that the airport reported it for 19 straight hours and visibility fell to about a mile and a quarter, and St. Paul briefly held the worst air quality of any major city in the country. The pattern has only intensified since: the state DNR named 2025 the 'Great Minnesota Smokeout,' likely the smokiest summer in 50 years or more, and in July 2026 the region saw its first Maroon, or Hazardous, alerts on record.
North Minneapolis and the Northern Metals story
Not all of the city's air problems blow in from Canada. For years the Northern Metals scrap-metal shredder operated on the north Minneapolis riverfront near the Lowry Avenue bridge, and state regulators found it was releasing lead and other heavy metals into the surrounding neighborhoods. While it ran, the 55411 ZIP code around it recorded the highest rate of asthma hospitalizations in Minnesota.
The Minnesota Pollution Control Agency moved to shut the shredder down, and after a settlement that included $2.5 million in penalties and costs, the operation permanently ceased in Minneapolis in 2019. Local advocates say heavy-metal levels in the area have declined since. It is a reminder that where you live in the city matters: a sensor near an industrial corridor can read differently from one a few miles away, which is exactly why a neighborhood-level reading is worth more than a citywide average.
Winter inversions and wood smoke
Minneapolis air quality is a two-season story. Summer belongs to wildfire smoke, but the cold months bring a quieter problem. On clear, still winter nights, cold air pools near the ground under a temperature inversion that acts like a lid, trapping wood smoke, vehicle exhaust, and home-heating particles instead of letting them disperse.
The result is that fine-particle pollution in the city runs roughly twice as high in winter as in other seasons, with December and January the months most likely to push readings above healthy limits. Wood-burning fireplaces and stoves are a meaningful contributor on those trapped nights, so a still, cold evening is often a good time to check the air before lighting a fire or heading out for a run.
Minneapolis air quality FAQ
What is the air quality in Minneapolis right now?
As of September 5, 2026 at 7:10 AM CDT, the air quality in Minneapolis, Minnesota is AQI 52 — Moderate — with PM2.5 at 9.9 µg/m³, the median of 4 live PurpleAir sensors. Sensitive groups may want to take it slower outside.
Why does Canadian wildfire smoke hit Minneapolis so often?
Minnesota sits directly downwind of Canada's boreal forests, so when those forests burn in summer, prevailing winds carry the smoke straight to the Twin Cities. It has driven record-setting seasons three years running: 22 air quality alerts in 2023, the 'Great Minnesota Smokeout' of 2025, and the first-ever Hazardous-category alerts for the region in July 2026.
Is Minneapolis air only bad in the summer?
No. Summer is dominated by Canadian wildfire smoke, but winter has its own issue: cold, still nights create temperature inversions that trap wood smoke and exhaust near the ground. Fine-particle pollution in the city runs roughly twice as high in winter as in other seasons, with December and January the worst months.
What the AQI numbers mean
| AQI | Category | What it means for you |
|---|---|---|
| 0–50 | Good | Open the windows. Great for outdoor activity. |
| 51–100 | Moderate | Sensitive groups may want to take it slower outside. |
| 101–150 | Unhealthy for Sensitive Groups | Kids, elderly, and respiratory conditions stay closer to home. |
| 151–200 | Unhealthy | Skip outdoor exercise. Close windows. |
| 201–300 | Very Unhealthy | Limit time outside. N95 if you must go. |
| 301+ | Hazardous | Health emergency. Stay inside, run filtration if you have it. |
Canairy lets you tighten these bands if you’re more sensitive than the EPA default, so an alert can fire before the official category changes. How to read the Air Quality Index
Where these readings come from
The AQI at the top of this page is the median of the 4 curated PurpleAir sensors Canairy tracks in and around Minneapolis, with outliers set aside so that one sensor brought indoors — or parked beside a barbecue — cannot set the number for a whole city. Every sensor behind it is listed above with its distance and bearing from the city center. There is no black box here.
In the app, a place you save resolves the same way first. When no neighborhood sensor is reporting it falls back to the nearest EPA AirNow monitor, and anything modeled rather than measured is labelled a regional estimate rather than passed off as a sensor reading. How low-cost sensors compare to regulatory monitors
About Canairy
Canairy is free to download. The free plan covers one saved place with live readings, a plain-English verdict, and push alerts when the air crosses a threshold you choose. Paid plans add more places, faster refreshes, and SMS alerts. It is built by two parents in Sonoma County, California, who got tired of guessing whether it was safe to send the kids outside. Why we built it
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Air quality near Minneapolis
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