Air Quality in Racine, Wisconsin — Live
Live readings from PurpleAir sensors across Racine — with free alerts when lake-breeze ozone or wildfire smoke moves in.
AQI 90 from 1 PurpleAir sensor · Trending up · data from PurpleAir
As of , the air quality in Racine, Wisconsin is AQI 90 — Moderate and rising — with PM2.5 at 30.7 µg/m³, from 1 live PurpleAir sensor. Canairy's verdict: Mostly clear.
For scale, that PM2.5 reading is about 2.0 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
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Live PurpleAir sensor map for Racine and Mount Pleasant, Sturtevant, Caledonia, Wind Point. Every dot is a real sensor, color-coded by current air quality.
Racine sits on the Lake Michigan shore almost exactly halfway between Chicago and Milwaukee, and that stretch of shoreline is the reason for the city's air quality story. Racine County is folded into the federal Milwaukee ozone nonattainment area, and on hot, sunny days from May through September the same lake breeze that cools the waterfront can trap ozone-forming pollution from Chicago, Gary, and Milwaukee right along the shore. Outside of that window, and outside the rare summer when wildfire smoke drifts down from Canada, Racine's air is unremarkable — this is a lake-breeze-and-ozone story, not a wildfire-smoke one.
What Canairy does for Racine
A clear verdict
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Racine is part of a federal ozone nonattainment area
Racine County — along with Milwaukee, Ozaukee, and parts of Washington, Waukesha, Sheboygan, and Kenosha counties — is designated nonattainment for the EPA's 2015 ozone health standard. The Wisconsin DNR reclassified the area from Moderate to Serious in December 2024, though the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit stayed that reclassification in September 2025, so Moderate requirements remain in effect while the case is litigated.
The DNR's own explanation for why is blunt: much of the ozone measured in these Wisconsin nonattainment areas originates from outside the state, or from sources the state has no authority to regulate, like vehicle traffic. Racine doesn't have to run its own smokestacks hot for its air to fail a federal standard — being downwind of two major metro areas is enough.
Why a lake breeze turns a clear day into an ozone day
Lake Michigan drives its own weather along this shoreline. On warm, sunny afternoons the air over the lake stays cooler than the air over land, and that temperature difference pulls a breeze in off the water. Researchers studying this same stretch of shoreline — comparing lakefront monitors in Kenosha and Sheboygan counties to sites just five or six kilometers inland — have measured ozone dropping by as much as 25 parts per billion over that short a distance, with lakefront readings reaching the 90s while inland monitors sat in the 60s at the same hour.
That's the mechanism at work in Racine too: ozone and its precursors drift out over the lake in the morning, then the afternoon lake breeze pushes that same polluted air back onshore and holds it along the immediate shoreline instead of letting it disperse inland. It's a May-through-September problem, tied to sun and heat, and it's why a still, sunny summer day here is a better predictor of a bad-air afternoon than anything happening locally.
The 2023 Canadian wildfire smoke was the exception, not the rule
In late June 2023, smoke from wildfires burning in Canada and northern Minnesota pushed into southeastern Wisconsin and stayed for days. The Wisconsin DNR extended its air quality advisory for PM2.5 and ozone through June 30, naming Racine and Kenosha counties specifically among the areas affected, and the City of Racine posted its own advisory telling residents to limit time outdoors and pointing people without air conditioning toward the Racine Public Library as a place to get out of the smoke.
It was part of a record year: Wisconsin issued 15 air quality advisories by mid-August 2023, the most since 2010, as Canada's worst wildfire season on record sent smoke deep into the Midwest. Days like that are still rare here — this isn't a city that lives with wildfire smoke every fall the way parts of California do — but 2023 showed that when a big enough fire burns far away, Racine's air can be affected regardless of the local ozone story.
Racine air quality FAQ
What is the air quality in Racine right now?
As of August 5, 2026 at 10:49 AM CDT, the air quality in Racine, Wisconsin is AQI 90 — Moderate — with PM2.5 at 30.7 µg/m³, the median of 1 live PurpleAir sensor. Sensitive groups may want to take it slower outside.
Why does Racine get ozone alerts in the summer?
Racine County is part of the federal Milwaukee ozone nonattainment area, and on hot, sunny days from May through September the lake breeze off Lake Michigan can trap ozone-forming pollution from Chicago and Milwaukee right along the shoreline instead of letting it disperse. That's why a still, sunny summer afternoon is Racine's most likely kind of bad-air day, more than anything burning locally.
Did wildfire smoke ever reach Racine?
Yes. In late June 2023, smoke from Canadian and northern Minnesota wildfires settled over southeastern Wisconsin for days, and the Wisconsin DNR's air quality advisory named Racine and Kenosha counties specifically. It was part of the worst run of air quality advisories Wisconsin had seen since 2010, but it remains the exception here rather than a yearly event.
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 1 curated PurpleAir sensor Canairy tracks in and around Racine, 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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