Air Quality in Tulsa, Oklahoma — Live

Live readings from PurpleAir sensors across Tulsa — with free alerts when ozone season turns the air unhealthy.

Live Tulsa AQI from nearby PurpleAir sensors loads when this page opens in a browser, along with a live sensor map covering Tulsa and Broken Arrow, Owasso, Bixby, Jenks.

Tulsa's air is genuinely good most of the year — Oklahoma currently meets every federal air quality standard, Tulsa included. The real story here is narrower: hot, still summer afternoons that can push ground-level ozone into unhealthy territory, and the occasional visible plume from the refineries that line the Arkansas River in west Tulsa.

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.

Tulsa was once on the EPA's 'dirty air list' — then built the nation's first Ozone Alert Program

When Oklahoma started monitoring air quality in the 1980s, Tulsa turned up on the EPA's nonattainment list for ozone — the government's formal term for a dirty-air city. INCOG, the regional planning agency, pushed through a redesignation to attainment in 1990, just months before Congress passed the 1990 Clean Air Act Amendments that would have made nonattainment status far harder to shake off.

The relief didn't last a full year. Ozone levels crept back up in 1991, so INCOG built the country's first Ozone Alert! Program in about two weeks that same summer — a voluntary system asking drivers, businesses, and industry to cut emissions on the days ozone was likely to spike. Heading into the 2025 season it was already in its 35th year, still run off the same tulsaairquality.com forecast page Tulsans check on summer mornings.

Ozone season runs roughly May through September, and it's a heat problem, not a smoke problem

Ground-level ozone forms when pollutants from tailpipes, power plants, and refineries react in strong sunlight, so Tulsa's worst air days aren't hazy or smoky — they're hot, bright, and still, often stacking up after a run of 90-degree-plus afternoons. Tulsa Area Air Quality, the site INCOG and its partners run, calls an Ozone Alert Day when forecasters expect the 8-hour ozone average to approach the federal standard, and it publishes the next day's call by early evening so people can plan around it.

The response leans on getting people out of their cars: MetroLink cuts bus and pass fares in half for the whole ozone season — May 23 through September 1 in the 2025 season — and the program's other asks are the ordinary ones, like carpooling, combining errands, and stopping at the pump's first click instead of topping off the tank. The math is simple: fewer VOCs in the air on a 95-degree afternoon means a lower ozone reading that evening.

West Tulsa's refineries are the other half of the story

Tulsa built its identity as the 'Oil Capital of the World,' and the refineries are still there. HF Sinclair, formerly HollyFrontier, runs an integrated refinery processing roughly 125,000 barrels of crude a day along the Arkansas River in west Tulsa, and routine flaring is a normal, permitted part of that operation — visible from a wide stretch of the city.

It isn't always routine. On the evening of December 16, 2024, an operational upset touched off a fire at the HF Sinclair refinery that sent thick black smoke over the west Tulsa skyline, visible to drivers along Riverside Drive before crews got it out. No evacuation was ordered and the company called it contained, but it's exactly the kind of sudden, localized event that one citywide AQI number can miss — which is why Canairy reads the sensors nearest the neighborhoods actually downwind, not just a single reading for the whole metro.

Tulsa air quality FAQ

What is the air quality in Tulsa right now?

This page shows the current AQI for Tulsa, 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, whether that's downtown, west Tulsa, or out toward Broken Arrow.

Why does Tulsa declare Ozone Alert Days in summer?

Ozone forms when emissions from vehicles, power plants, and refineries react in strong sunlight, and Tulsa's hot, still summer afternoons are exactly the conditions that let it build up. INCOG's Ozone Alert! Program — the first of its kind in the country when it launched in 1991 — forecasts these days each evening for the one ahead, and Canairy's live readings let you check whether today is actually shaping up that way rather than waiting on the forecast alone.

Does the West Tulsa refinery affect nearby air quality?

HF Sinclair's west Tulsa refinery runs routine flaring as a normal part of operations, and it has had at least one notable upset — a December 2024 fire that sent black smoke over the skyline. Routine flaring and rare incidents like that are local, not citywide, which is why it's worth watching a sensor near west Tulsa specifically rather than relying on one number for the whole metro.

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.

Where does Canairy's Tulsa data come from?

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

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