Air Quality in Norfolk, Virginia — Live

Live readings from PurpleAir sensors across Norfolk — with free alerts when summer ozone or drifting smoke pushes the air into unhealthy territory.

Live Norfolk AQI from nearby PurpleAir sensors loads when this page opens in a browser, along with a live sensor map covering Norfolk and Virginia Beach, Chesapeake, Portsmouth, Hampton.

Most of the year the air over Norfolk is unremarkable — this is a flat, coastal city with no wildfire risk of its own, and Hampton Roads has spent most of the past two decades meeting federal ozone standards. The season to actually watch runs roughly April through September, when hot, humid afternoons and heavy interstate traffic combine to cook up ground-level ozone. Then, in June 2023, a stranger event showed up: smoke from wildfires burning hundreds of miles north in Quebec drifted down the Atlantic seaboard and pushed Norfolk into a Code Red air quality alert, with the Eastern Shore hitting Code Purple, even though nothing was burning anywhere near Virginia.

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.

Norfolk's ozone season runs April through September

Hampton Roads spent years as an ozone nonattainment area under the federal 1997 eight-hour ozone standard before cleaning up enough for the EPA to redesignate the region to attainment in 2007. It went on to meet the tighter 2008 ozone standard by 2012, and Virginia's Department of Environmental Quality has kept the metro area — Norfolk, Virginia Beach, Chesapeake, Suffolk, Hampton, and Newport News among them — under an EPA-approved maintenance plan ever since, most recently reaffirmed in a Federal Register rule published in October 2023.

What makes ozone the recurring worry here isn't one smokestack, it's heat, sunlight, and cars. Older regional planning documents warned that if Hampton Roads smog levels ran too high for even an hour in a summer, the area would face mandatory tailpipe testing and new business emission limits — which is why the region's air-quality plans have historically focused on traffic and tailpipe emissions through corridors like the Hampton Roads Bridge-Tunnel rather than pointing at a single industrial source.

The Canadian wildfire smoke that reached Norfolk in June 2023

On back-to-back days in early June 2023, smoke from record wildfires burning hundreds of miles away in Quebec drifted down the Atlantic coast and settled over Hampton Roads. Local stations reported the sky turning hazy as the air quality index climbed from Code Orange to Code Red — the 151-200 'Unhealthy' band — while Northampton and Accomack counties on the Eastern Shore were pushed into Code Purple, 201-300, one of the worst readings the region had recorded. City officials advised people to limit outdoor exposure and keep windows closed, and local coverage noted that four hours outside in Code Red air carried roughly the same lung exposure as smoking a cigarette.

What made the event unusual is that Norfolk itself has essentially no wildfire risk — flat, wet, coastal Virginia does not burn. But 2023 showed that a fire thousands of miles north can still push the city's air into unhealthy territory for days, arriving as the kind of fine smoke particle that Norfolk's ozone-focused monitoring wasn't built to catch. It's why Canairy tracks particle sensors here as closely as ozone: the two pollutants have different seasons and different sources, and a page that only watches one of them misses the other.

The Port of Virginia and Naval Station Norfolk are the quieter sources

Norfolk sits on a harbor shared by the Port of Virginia and Naval Station Norfolk, the largest naval base in the world, and both keep a constant stream of container ships, tugs, and drayage trucks moving past neighborhoods along the Elizabeth River. The port has run its Green Operator Program since 2006, offering rebates of up to $35,000 to replace or retrofit older diesel drayage trucks, and has helped replace or retrofit more than 400 of them so far.

In 2024 the port won $380 million from the EPA's Clean Ports Grant Program — the second-largest award in the country — to convert cargo-handling equipment to zero-emission electric power. That money is aimed squarely at diesel particulate matter, the fine soot that comes off ship engines and truck traffic near the terminals, which is a quieter, more constant contributor to Norfolk's air than the ozone spikes and imported wildfire smoke that make the news.

Norfolk air quality FAQ

What is the air quality in Norfolk right now?

This page shows the current AQI for Norfolk, 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 Norfolk get a Code Red air quality alert in 2023?

In June 2023, smoke from record wildfires burning hundreds of miles north in Quebec drifted down the Atlantic coast and settled over Hampton Roads, pushing Norfolk into a Code Red alert (AQI 151-200) while the Eastern Shore hit Code Purple (201-300). Norfolk has essentially no wildfire risk of its own — the smoke came entirely from Canada — which is why a fine-particle sensor network matters here even in a region that usually worries more about ozone.

When is ozone season in Hampton Roads?

Ground-level ozone is the region's main warm-weather concern, typically running from April through September when heat and sunlight react with vehicle exhaust. Hampton Roads was once a nonattainment area for ozone under the 1997 federal standard, was redesignated to attainment in 2007, met the tighter 2008 standard by 2012, and has stayed under an EPA-approved maintenance plan since, most recently reaffirmed in 2023.

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 Norfolk data come from?

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