Air Quality in Minot, North Dakota — Live

Live readings from PurpleAir sensors across Minot — with free alerts the moment smoke drifts down from the north.

Live Minot AQI from nearby PurpleAir sensors loads when this page opens in a browser, along with a live sensor map covering Minot and Burlington, Surrey, Berthold, Velva.

Most of the year, Minot's air is about as quiet as it gets in an American city — a small prairie town on the Drift Prairie with little heavy industry, ringed by farmland in every direction. Then, on May 17-18, 2023, smoke from wildfires burning in western Canada rolled south and Ward County recorded a full 24 hours of "purple," hazardous-category air quality — something North Dakota's Department of Environmental Quality called the worst air the state had ever measured.

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.

Minot's worst air quality on record came from Canada, not North Dakota

Fires broke out across western Canada in mid-May 2023, and by the morning of May 17 the smoke had reached Minot: downtown thickened and dimmed under haze, a rooftop photo from the Magic City Discovery Center showed the skyline barely visible, and local track meets and golf practice were called off. By that afternoon Trinity Health's emergency room had treated at least one patient for smoke-related symptoms. Ward County's air quality index crossed into the hazardous "purple" category for a full day — the first time that had happened here — while the Scandinavian Heritage Park still went ahead with its Norwegian Constitution Day gathering under a smoke-hazed sky.

That single event turned out to be the opening act for what North Dakota's papers later called "the summer of smoke." By September, EPA data showed seven North Dakota counties, Ward among them, had joined 19 counties across 11 states in recording a full 24 hours of purple-level air, something ND DEQ's air monitoring manager Ryan Mills said the state had never seen before. Canadian wildfires that year eventually burned more than 380,000 acres and sent smoke as far as Western Europe — a reminder that Minot's air can turn on a fire hundreds of miles north, with no local warning beyond a hazy sky.

Minot sits in a river valley, not on the open prairie

Unlike the flat tableland that surrounds it, Minot itself sits down in the valley of the Souris River — known locally as the Mouse River — roughly 160 feet below the Drift Prairie above. Downtown Minot sits around 1,549 feet in elevation while the airport on the plain above is near 1,716 feet, a real drop carved by the river over thousands of years. Valleys like this are exactly the kind of terrain that lets cold, dense air pool overnight rather than mix out, especially on the still, subzero nights Minot is known for.

That geography does not create Minot's air problems on its own, but it does mean the city is a natural collecting point for whatever is already in the air above it, whether that is a winter cold-air pool or a low-lying smoke plume drifting down from the north. It is also part of why a single official reading miles away tells you less than a sensor near the actual valley floor where most of Minot lives.

There's no permanent government monitor watching Minot's air

Ward County has historically gone without a regulatory air-quality monitor of its own — AirNow's federal network shows no current-conditions station in Minot, and the American Lung Association's State of the Air report notes that North Dakota's monitoring network is thin enough that many counties, Ward included, get no annual grade at all for ozone or particle pollution. Most years, that gap doesn't matter much: Ryan Mills of ND DEQ has pointed out that North Dakota normally has some of the cleanest air of any state once you set aside a smoke event.

But it does mean that on an ordinary day, or even a bad one, there has traditionally been no easy way for someone in Minot to check the air where they actually live. Ward County is also, per the Census Bureau, a rural, agricultural county with fewer than 35 people per square mile — plenty of farmland and open sky, but not the kind of place regulators have historically prioritized for monitoring. PurpleAir sensors fill exactly that gap, giving Minot a live picture of its own air instead of a distant reading or none at all.

Minot air quality FAQ

What is the air quality in Minot right now?

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

Why did Minot's air quality get so bad in 2023?

On May 17-18, 2023, smoke from wildfires burning in western Canada drifted south over North Dakota, and Ward County recorded a full 24 hours of hazardous "purple" air quality for the first time on record. By September, seven North Dakota counties had joined 19 counties across 11 states in hitting that same hazardous level at some point that summer, in what North Dakota's Department of Environmental Quality called the worst air quality the state had ever measured.

Does Minot have its own official air quality monitor?

Not really. AirNow's federal monitoring network doesn't list a current-conditions station in Minot, and the American Lung Association's State of the Air report notes that North Dakota's monitoring network is thin enough that many counties, including Ward, receive no annual grade for ozone or particle pollution. That's part of why a live sensor network like PurpleAir matters here.

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 Minot data come from?

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

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.