Air Quality in Oxnard, California — Live
Live readings from PurpleAir sensors across Oxnard — with free alerts the moment the air turns.
AQI 64 from 5 PurpleAir sensors · Holding steady · data from PurpleAir
As of , the air quality in Oxnard, California is AQI 64 — Moderate and holding steady — with PM2.5 at 15.9 µg/m³, the median of 5 live PurpleAir sensors reading 54 to 74. Canairy's verdict: Mostly clear.
For scale, that PM2.5 reading is about 1.1 times 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 Oxnard: grass pollen is the strongest of the three at a very low 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 Oxnard and Ventura, Port Hueneme, Camarillo, Santa Paula. Every dot is a real sensor, color-coded by current air quality.
Sensor by sensor in Oxnard
The sensors Canairy reads in Oxnard agree right now — all 5 sit in the Moderate band, a 20-point spread — so the city-wide number is a fair description of the whole area today.
| From city center | AQI | Category |
|---|---|---|
| 2.2 mi NW | 59 | Moderate |
| 2.8 mi SSE | 74 | Moderate |
| 3.3 mi SSW | 64 | Moderate |
| 3.8 mi WSW | 71 | Moderate |
| 5.9 mi N | 54 | Moderate |
Oxnard sits on the coast at the western edge of the Oxnard Plain, about sixty miles up the shoreline from Los Angeles, and for most of the year the city's air is not the county's problem. Ventura County as a whole still fails state and federal ozone standards, but on the air district's daily forecast the ozone trouble usually shows up inland around Simi Valley and Moorpark rather than on the coastal plain. What Oxnard has instead are two narrower problems. South Oxnard and Port Hueneme rank in the worst five percent of California communities for diesel exposure. And when a Santa Ana wind event turns a brush fire in the hills into a countywide event, the coast stops being an advantage.
What Canairy does for Oxnard
A clear verdict
Not just a number — a plain-English call for Oxnard: 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 Oxnard or across the country, on one screen.
What the air in Oxnard is doing next
| When | AQI | Expected air quality | Main pollutant |
|---|---|---|---|
| Today | 52 | Moderate | PM2.5 |
| Tomorrow | 40 | Good | ozone |
| Sunday | 38 | Good | ozone |
| Monday | 35 | Good | ozone |
| Tuesday | 39 | Good | PM2.5 |
Forecast from EPA AirNow for the Oxnard 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.
The Thomas Fire is still the benchmark here
The Thomas Fire started on December 4, 2017 and was not fully contained until January 12, 2018. It burned 281,893 acres and destroyed 1,063 structures, and at the time it was the largest wildfire in modern California history. By the morning of December 6, with the fire at 65,000 acres and zero containment, the county fire department had issued a hazardous air quality warning covering Ventura, Oxnard and Camarillo as shifting winds pushed the smoke back over the coastal plain.
Ash was falling like snow from Ventura up to Santa Barbara. By December 8 the Sheriff's Department was telling people to wear N95 masks outdoors, and school districts across the area closed for the rest of that week. That warning is the fact worth knowing — we have not found a published hour-by-hour reading for an Oxnard monitor from that week, so we will not put a number on it.
South Oxnard's air is not the same as the rest of the city
CalEnviroScreen puts South Oxnard and Port Hueneme in the top five percent of California communities for diesel exposure. That is a truck-and-port problem rather than a wildfire problem, and it runs all year. The county air district installed an EPA reference-grade monitoring station at Haycox Elementary School in South Oxnard in 2019, and later added black carbon monitors at the school, the Port of Hueneme entrance gate, the high school district and in La Colonia.
A community advisory committee of South Oxnard and Port Hueneme residents chose two of those sites themselves. If you live south of Channel Islands Boulevard, your air is genuinely different from the air in RiverPark — which is the practical reason to watch a sensor where you actually are rather than a citywide figure.
Santa Ana wind days are the ones to watch
In November 2024 the National Weather Service issued a particularly dangerous situation red flag warning — the first of its kind in the Los Angeles area since 2020 — with gusts over 65 mph. The Mountain Fire started that morning near Balcom Canyon Road in Somis, ran across State Route 118 into Camarillo Heights, and burned 19,904 acres before it was contained on November 27. It destroyed 243 structures and took out roughly 12,000 acres of farmland.
That fire started about fifteen miles from downtown Oxnard, which is close enough that wind direction, not distance, decides what you end up breathing.
Oxnard air quality FAQ
What is the air quality in Oxnard right now?
As of September 11, 2026 at 6:34 AM PDT, the air quality in Oxnard, California is AQI 64 — Moderate — with PM2.5 at 15.9 µg/m³, the median of 5 live PurpleAir sensors. Sensitive groups may want to take it slower outside.
Why is there smoke in Oxnard today?
Usually one of three things. A brush fire somewhere in Ventura County being pushed toward the coast by Santa Ana winds — that is what happened during the Thomas Fire in December 2017 and the Mountain Fire in November 2024. An approved agricultural burn: the county air district issues separate burn or no-burn decisions for the coastal plain region covering Ventura, Oxnard and Camarillo. Or smoke drifting in from a fire well outside the county. Checking the wind direction usually tells you which.
Does being on the coast keep Oxnard's air clean?
Partly, and not reliably. The coastal plain generally sees less of the county's ozone than the inland valleys do. But Ventura County still does not meet state or federal ozone standards, South Oxnard carries a heavy diesel burden regardless of the weather, and an offshore wind event can put the entire county's smoke directly over the city. The ocean helps on ordinary days and does nothing on the bad ones.
Is the air in La Colonia and South Oxnard different from the rest of the city?
Yes, and the air district treats it that way. South Oxnard and Port Hueneme are in the top five percent statewide for diesel exposure, which is why the black carbon monitoring network was built there rather than citywide, with residents on the advisory committee picking two of the four sites. A city-average reading will understate what a household near the port or the truck routes is breathing.
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 5 curated PurpleAir sensors Canairy tracks in and around Oxnard, 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 Oxnard
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