Air Quality in Morgantown, West Virginia — Live

Live readings from PurpleAir sensors across Morgantown — with free alerts when valley air turns unhealthy.

Live Morgantown AQI from nearby PurpleAir sensors loads when this page opens in a browser, along with a live sensor map covering Morgantown and Star City, Westover, Granville, Cheat Lake.

Morgantown's air is unremarkable most of the year, but the Monongahela River valley the city sits in doesn't forgive it easily when things go wrong. Two coal-fired power plants sit within ten miles of downtown, the region's hills trap still air on calm days, and every so often — as happened in June 2023 — smoke from Canadian wildfires drifts hundreds of miles south and settles over north-central West Virginia. The American Lung Association's most recent report actually downgraded both Morgantown's ozone and short-term particle pollution grades from an A to a B, a sign that summer haze here is a real, worsening pattern rather than a non-issue.

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.

Why a river valley town gets stuck with its own air

Morgantown sits at around 860 feet along the Monongahela River, with hills on both sides rising past 1,200 feet — Sky Rock in Dorsey Knob Park tops out near 1,398 feet, and Coopers Rock to the east climbs to 2,000 feet or more. That kind of terrain is exactly what forms a temperature inversion: on calm, clear nights, cool air sinks into the valley and gets capped by a layer of warmer air above it, and whatever is in that cool air near the ground — car exhaust, wood smoke, power plant emissions — has nowhere to go until the sun burns the cap off the next morning.

It is the same setup that has made the wider Monongahela Valley a byword for trapped industrial air going back generations, and it still applies today even though the region's heavy industry has thinned out. On a still winter morning, the fog sitting over the river in downtown Morgantown or across the water in Star City is a visible reminder that the valley's air doesn't always leave when you'd like it to.

Two coal plants sit just outside town

The Longview Power Plant, a 710-megawatt coal-fired station, sits about five miles north of Morgantown near Maidsville, and the Fort Martin Power Plant — a 1,098-megawatt coal facility also along the Monongahela — sits roughly ten miles northeast, also near Maidsville. Both plants have modern pollution controls, including selective catalytic reduction and flue gas desulfurization, which cut sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxide output compared with older coal plants of the same size. Even so, two large coal-fired stations sharing the same river valley and airshed as the city is a genuine, ongoing factor in Morgantown's particle and ozone-precursor pollution, and both owners have signaled an eventual shift toward gas-fired generation over the next decade.

Natural gas drilling adds a second, less visible source. Monongalia County sits over the Marcellus Shale, and WVU's own Marcellus Shale Energy and Environmental Laboratory, sited near Morgantown, has published research finding measurable local air-quality impacts — including elevated particulate matter — during the horizontal drilling phase of well development, on top of the diesel engine traffic that supports it. None of this makes Morgantown a heavy-industry city the way it once was, but it does mean the valley's air carries a real, identifiable mix of combustion sources beyond just cars and furnaces.

When smoke arrives from somewhere else entirely

Morgantown doesn't sit anywhere near a fire-prone landscape, but that didn't spare it in late June 2023, when smoke from wildfires burning in Quebec and Ontario drifted south across the entire eastern half of the country. The West Virginia Department of Environmental Protection issued an air quality alert covering the northern half of the state, and Morgantown's own Dominion Post reported the smoke settling visibly over north-central West Virginia along with the rest of the region.

It was an unusual event for this part of Appalachia, and it's unlikely to happen every summer — but it proved that Morgantown's air isn't only shaped by what's happening in the valley itself. A fire a thousand miles away, combined with the right wind pattern, can put the city under the same kind of smoke advisory that Western cities deal with far more routinely.

Morgantown air quality FAQ

What is the air quality in Morgantown right now?

This page shows the current AQI for Morgantown, 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 does Morgantown's air quality get worse in summer?

Ground-level ozone is Morgantown's most persistent air-quality problem, and the American Lung Association's most recent State of the Air report downgraded the area's ozone grade from an A to a B. Hot, sunny days combine vehicle exhaust and emissions from the Longview and Fort Martin coal plants nearby to form ozone, and the surrounding hills can trap that haze in the river valley until a weather front clears it out.

Did Canadian wildfire smoke ever reach Morgantown?

Yes. In late June 2023, smoke from wildfires burning in Quebec and Ontario drifted south and the West Virginia Department of Environmental Protection issued an air quality alert covering the northern half of the state, including Morgantown. It was a rare event for this region, but it showed that fires far outside Appalachia can still affect the air here under the right winds.

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 Morgantown data come from?

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