Air Quality in Palmdale, California — Live

Live readings from PurpleAir sensors across Palmdale — with free alerts the moment the air turns.

Live Palmdale AQI from nearby PurpleAir sensors loads when this page opens in a browser, along with a live sensor map covering Palmdale and Lancaster, Littlerock, Lake Los Angeles, Acton.

Palmdale sits at the southern edge of the Antelope Valley, about 2,660 feet up and pressed right against the north face of the San Gabriel Mountains. That position decides a lot about its air. The 14 Freeway enters the valley here, carrying the commute to Los Angeles in both directions; the Antelope Valley Air Quality Management District counts more than 100,000 vehicles a day crossing the valley's southern boundary on it, and lists that traffic alongside the rock, gravel and sand quarries along the south side among the four main particulate sources in the valley. The mountains that make Palmdale's skyline are also where the region's big fires burn, and smoke coming off them arrives here before it reaches anywhere else in the valley.

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.

The 14 brings the commute — and the basin's air with it

The Antelope Valley got its own air district in 1997, when the state legislature split it off from the South Coast AQMD. The county line did not change the air. The district still describes its problem as a combination of a sunny climate, pollution-trapping mountains, transported pollution from the Los Angeles basin and a growing population, and says violations of the federal ozone standard happen several times each summer. Ozone is a summer afternoon pollutant: it is cooked out of traffic and industrial exhaust by sunlight and heat, which the high desert has in abundance.

The traffic figure is the district's own. Caltrans data it cited in 2018 put the peak daily vehicle trip rate along the valley's southern boundary — effectively the 14 through Palmdale, the primary route to the Los Angeles area — above 110,000, a number that had climbed over the previous decade. On the regulatory side, the EPA classifies the West Mojave Desert, which covers the Antelope Valley and the Victor Valley across the San Bernardino County line, as a Severe-15 nonattainment area for the 2008 eight-hour ozone standard, with an attainment deadline of 20 July 2027.

Palmdale is the closest city to the fires in the Angeles

The Bobcat Fire started on 6 September 2020 when a tree touched a Southern California Edison power line in the Angeles National Forest. It burned for 83 days, covered 115,997 acres and destroyed 169 structures. By 22 September it had run north over Pleasant View Ridge into the Antelope Valley foothills, with mandatory evacuations at Pearblossom, Juniper Hills, Valyermo and Llano, and fire officials reporting spot fires landing up to a mile ahead of the front. The Red Cross set up its evacuation point at Palmdale High School, and large animals went to the Antelope Valley Fairgrounds in Lancaster. Air quality across the Antelope Valley was unhealthy for sensitive groups.

That was not a one-off. A month earlier the Lake Fire burned 31,089 acres near Lake Hughes on the valley's western edge, forcing about 100 homes to evacuate. Because Palmdale sits directly below the mountain front, a fire on the forest's north slope can put smoke over the south end of the city while the north end is still clear — and unlike wind-blown dust, wildfire smoke tends to settle in and stay overnight.

Dust here is old news, and it hasn't gone away

A 1963 Department of Defense study cited by the air district found that records kept in Palmdale between 1948 and 1953 showed an average of six dust storms a year. A 1970 US Department of Agriculture soil survey put it more bluntly: soil blowing is a hazard in all parts of the Antelope Valley area. The district says dust blown from the east across farmland can be thick enough to cause visibility problems on parts of Air Force Plant 42 — the airfield where Northrop Grumman and Lockheed Martin, Palmdale's two largest private employers, build aircraft.

The rule meant to control it, AVAQMD Rule 403, dates to 1976 and was last amended in April 2010. It bars visible dust from crossing a property line, caps dust emissions at 20 percent opacity, and defines high wind conditions as gusts over 25 miles an hour. What the valley does not have is dense official monitoring: the district's only ambient PM10 and PM2.5 sampler is in Lancaster, roughly six miles north of downtown Palmdale, and the district has acknowledged it sits inside an urban core that partly shields it from the dust happening in the open valley.

Palmdale air quality FAQ

Why is there smoke in Palmdale today?

Usually because something is burning in the Angeles National Forest or the mountains west of the valley, and Palmdale sits closest to both. The clearest recent example is the Bobcat Fire in September 2020, which burned 115,997 acres and pushed north into the foothills at Juniper Hills, Pearblossom, Valyermo and Llano, with Palmdale High School serving as the Red Cross evacuation point. The Lake Fire near Lake Hughes burned 31,089 acres the month before. If there is no fire in the news, a calm winter night can also mean wood smoke or permitted open burning — the AVAQMD publishes a daily burn forecast at 661-723-8070, option 1, under Rule 444.

What is the air quality in Palmdale right now?

This page shows the live AQI for Palmdale from PurpleAir sensors around the city, updated continuously. It is worth checking a nearby sensor rather than a regional number here: the air district's only official particulate monitor for the whole Antelope Valley is on Division Street in Lancaster, about six miles north, and the district says urban development around it partly shields it from windblown dust.

Is Palmdale's air different from Lancaster's?

In the ways a local would notice, yes. Palmdale sits about 300 feet higher and right against the San Gabriel wall, so smoke from mountain fires reaches it first, and the 14 Freeway funnels the valley's commuter and truck traffic in past its southern edge. But the air district is careful to say the valley's winds shift so fast and so unpredictably that dust raised in one part of it lands in another, which is why it treats the Antelope Valley as a single community rather than a set of separate neighbourhoods. On a dusty day, Palmdale and Lancaster often share the same problem.

Should my kid's school keep them inside on bad air days?

It is a fair question here. Childhood asthma across Antelope Valley zip codes runs about 15.4 percent, above the Los Angeles County average of 13.1 percent, and Los Angeles County public health has reported that 72 percent of children with asthma living in the Antelope Valley regularly miss school. A practical approach is to pick a threshold — many families use AQI 100, the point where the air becomes Unhealthy for Sensitive Groups — and set an alert on the sensor closest to the school rather than checking a citywide number after the fact.

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.

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.

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