Air Quality in Sioux Falls, South Dakota — Live

Live readings from PurpleAir sensors across Sioux Falls — with free alerts the moment smoke or summer ozone moves in.

Live Sioux Falls AQI from nearby PurpleAir sensors loads when this page opens in a browser, along with a live sensor map covering Sioux Falls and Brandon, Tea, Harrisburg, Dell Rapids.

On a typical day, Sioux Falls has some of the cleanest air of any mid-size American city — the near-constant wind blowing across the flat, open farmland of eastern South Dakota keeps pollution from settling, and PurpleAir and state monitors alike usually read Good. The exception arrived hard in the summer of 2023, when smoke drifting down from more than 90 wildfires burning across Canada pushed the local Air Quality Index into unhealthy territory more than once between May and August, and the state issued a string of air quality alerts unlike anything most residents had seen before.

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.

Why the air here is usually this good

Sioux Falls sits in rolling hills at the junction of Interstates 29 and 90, on the flat, mostly treeless farmland of eastern South Dakota. There's rarely anything to block the wind, and that wind is the city's biggest air quality asset: pollution has nowhere to pool the way it does in a mountain valley or river basin. On a normal day the readings here sit in the high 30s on the AQI scale, with fine particle (PM2.5) levels low enough to meet the World Health Organization's annual guideline.

Ozone is the pollutant that actually moves the needle locally. South Dakota's Department of Agriculture and Natural Resources tests for it, along with particulates, sulfur dioxide, and nitrogen dioxide, at its Sioux Falls monitoring site. On hot, still days in July and August — exactly the kind the city's humid continental climate produces most summers, with hot, humid stretches sandwiched between cold, dry winters — ozone can push the AQI up into the 50s, into Moderate territory, even with nothing burning nearby.

2023 was the year Canadian smoke found Sioux Falls

Sioux Falls had dealt with distant wildfire smoke before, but the 2023 Canadian fire season made it a recurring story instead of a one-off. On May 16, 2023, the National Weather Service warned that smoke from more than 90 active fires burning across Canada would reduce visibility and push air quality into unhealthy territory across the Sioux Falls area; two days later the state's Department of Agriculture and Natural Resources, together with the Department of Health, issued a formal air quality alert for the region.

That was only the start. At the peak of one of that summer's smoke events, the local AQI climbed as high as 152 — solidly in the unhealthy range — and on August 29, 2023, state officials issued yet another alert as a fresh round of Canadian wildfire smoke moved back into the area. For a city used to checking the weather app and not the air quality one, it was a real shift, and it's part of why Canairy exists: the sensors show smoke arriving well before it's visible from a front porch.

The smell everyone in town already knows about

Sioux Falls' most talked-about air issue isn't smoke — it's the Smithfield Foods pork plant, a century-old campus just north of Falls Park in the middle of downtown. Longtime residents have simply learned to live with the odor on certain wind days, and while South Dakota doesn't have the statutory authority to regulate smell the way it regulates pollutants, the plant has made real changes: a new hog barn and added air-scrubbing equipment cut methane emissions from the site starting around 2021.

In February 2026, Smithfield announced a $1.3 billion replacement plant at Foundation Park, on the city's northwest side near Crooks, citing odor reduction as a central reason for the move — company representatives have said a modern plant is built so neighbors can 'hardly even smell anything.' The move has drawn its own pushback, with Crooks-area residents raising concerns in court over permitting, traffic, and property values, a reminder that the story of local air quality in Sioux Falls isn't only about AQI numbers.

Sioux Falls air quality FAQ

What is the air quality in Sioux Falls right now?

This page shows the current AQI for Sioux Falls, 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 Sioux Falls get so many air quality alerts in 2023?

An unusually severe Canadian wildfire season sent smoke drifting into eastern South Dakota repeatedly that year. The National Weather Service and the state issued alerts in May and again in late August 2023, and the local AQI reached as high as 152 - solidly in the unhealthy range - during one of that summer's smoke events. It was one of the most sustained stretches of bad air Sioux Falls has seen in recent memory.

What's the smell sometimes coming from downtown Sioux Falls?

That's usually the Smithfield Foods pork processing plant just north of Falls Park, a fixture in the city for over a century. It's an odor issue more than a regulated-pollutant one - South Dakota doesn't have legal authority to regulate smell - but the company has added air-scrubbing equipment and, in February 2026, announced a $1.3 billion replacement plant at Foundation Park built specifically to cut the odor.

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 Sioux Falls data come from?

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