Air Quality in Santa Clarita, California — Live
Live readings from PurpleAir sensors across Santa Clarita — with free alerts the moment the air turns.
Live Santa Clarita AQI from nearby PurpleAir sensors loads when this page opens in a browser, along with a live sensor map covering Santa Clarita and Valencia, Newhall, Saugus, Canyon Country, Stevenson Ranch, Castaic.
Santa Clarita sits in its own valley on the far side of the Newhall Pass, over the ridge from the San Fernando Valley and about 30 miles northwest of downtown Los Angeles. The San Gabriel Mountains close it in on the east, the Santa Susana Mountains on the south and west, and the Sierra Pelona on the north, with the city itself at roughly 1,200 feet and most neighbourhoods between 1,100 and 1,700. That bowl shape is the whole story for air here. It holds the heat — the record high is 118 degrees, set on 5 July 2024 — it holds the smoke when the hills burn, and it holds whatever the freight trucks and the landfill to the west put into the air on a still day.
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 two fires the valley measures other fires against
The Sand Fire started at about 2:10 in the afternoon on 22 July 2016, near Sand Canyon Road and Soledad Canyon Road in the Angeles National Forest. Temperatures were over 110 degrees with winds gusting to 25 mph. It burned 41,432 acres before it was fully contained on 3 August, destroyed 18 homes, and killed two people, one of them Robert Bresnick, a 67-year-old man visiting a friend who had refused to evacuate. At least 10,000 homes were cleared out of Sand Canyon, Placerita Canyon and Little Tujunga Canyon, 3,379 firefighters were assigned to it, and Los Angeles County declared a state of emergency on 26 July.
The Tick Fire was smaller and faster and came much closer to houses. It was reported around 1:40 p.m. on Thursday 24 October 2019 near the 31600 block of Tick Canyon Road in Canyon Country, and it grew past 850 acres in under an hour on Santa Ana winds. It finished at 4,615 acres with 22 structures destroyed and full containment on 31 October. More than 40,000 people across the Santa Clarita Valley were evacuated, State Route 14 was closed, Southern California Edison cut power to roughly 26,000 residents as a precaution, schools and colleges across the city shut, and evacuation centres opened at College of the Canyons in Valencia and West Ranch High School.
Freight over the Newhall Pass
The Newhall Pass tops out at 1,755 feet and is the gap between the Santa Susana Mountains and the San Gabriels — the main way into the Los Angeles basin from the north. Interstate 5 and State Route 14 both run through it and meet there, near Santa Clarita's southernmost point, with I-5 forming the city's western boundary and SR-14 part of the eastern one. Everything moving by truck between the Central Valley and Los Angeles goes up and over that grade, and trucks climbing a long grade work hardest and emit most.
That volume is the reason for the I-5 North County Enhancements project, which is adding truck lanes in both directions between SR-14 and Calgrove Boulevard along with carpool and auxiliary lanes, running from the SR-14 interchange up to just south of Parker Road in Castaic. Construction is due to finish in spring 2027. The project exists partly because Santa Clarita is projected to gain over 25,000 new residents by 2035 — which is a fair summary of the direction traffic here is heading.
The landfill west of town
Chiquita Canyon Landfill is a 639-acre municipal solid waste site at 29201 Henry Mayo Drive in Castaic, just west of Santa Clarita, run by Waste Connections since 1972. Around May 2022 a subsurface elevated temperature event began in its northwestern portion — a smouldering or pyrolysis reaction underground, now covering roughly 30 to 35 acres. Reactions like this raise carbon monoxide, hydrogen gas, hydrogen sulfide and volatile organic compounds in the landfill gas, and testing found benzene in the leachate condensate at levels that made it hazardous waste.
The regulatory record is unusually heavy. South Coast AQMD has logged more than 30,000 odour complaints from nearby residents since January 2023 and issued approximately 355 Notices of Violation. The US EPA issued a Unilateral Administrative Order on 21 February 2024 requiring immediate protective measures, followed by a Clean Air Act Finding of Violation on 4 June 2024, and in July 2025 required at least 100 additional acres of geomembrane cover. The landfill stopped accepting waste as of 1 January 2025 after the Los Angeles Regional Water Quality Control Board denied its request to open a new disposal cell. Under an amended abatement order the site now runs drone methane inspections of the reaction area weekly, and remote gas monitoring reports to South Coast AQMD in real time.
Santa Clarita air quality FAQ
Why is there smoke in Santa Clarita today?
Nine times out of ten it is brush burning somewhere in the hills around the valley, and the wind deciding where it goes. The Sand Fire in July 2016 burned 41,432 acres out of the Angeles National Forest, and the Tick Fire in October 2019 ran through Canyon Country on Santa Ana winds and forced the evacuation of more than 40,000 people. Both were driven by the same combination the valley gets every autumn: dry chaparral, heat and offshore wind. Smoke from fires much further away can settle in here too, because the surrounding ranges hold it once it arrives. A separate and different problem is odour rather than smoke — the subsurface reaction at Chiquita Canyon Landfill in Castaic has generated tens of thousands of complaints since 2023.
What is the air quality in Santa Clarita right now?
This page shows the live AQI for Santa Clarita, calculated from PurpleAir sensors across the valley and updated continuously. Santa Clarita is spread over a large area — Valencia, Newhall, Saugus and Canyon Country sit in different parts of the bowl at different elevations — so a reading taken near the I-5 corridor will not always match one taken up a canyon. Watching the sensors nearest to you is the point.
Does the Chiquita Canyon Landfill affect the air in Santa Clarita?
The landfill sits in Castaic, west of the city, and the subsurface elevated temperature event that started there around May 2022 now covers roughly 30 to 35 acres. South Coast AQMD has received more than 30,000 odour complaints from nearby residents since January 2023 and issued around 355 Notices of Violation. The landfill stopped accepting waste on 1 January 2025, but the underground reaction has not stopped, and both the EPA and South Coast AQMD still have active orders in place — including weekly drone methane inspections of the reaction area and real-time gas monitoring reported to the district.
Why does the freeway matter for air quality in Santa Clarita?
Interstate 5 and State Route 14 meet at the Newhall Pass, at 1,755 feet, the main northern entrance to the Los Angeles basin. I-5 forms the city's western boundary and carries the freight moving between the Central Valley and Los Angeles up a long climb. Truck lanes are being added in both directions between SR-14 and Calgrove Boulevard as part of a project due to finish in spring 2027. If you live or send a child to school within a few hundred metres of that corridor, the sensor closest to you will read differently from one further up the valley.
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.
Get Canairy free on Google Play.