Air Quality in Yakima, Washington — Live
Live readings from PurpleAir sensors across Yakima — with free alerts the moment smoke moves in.
AQI 25 from 5 PurpleAir sensors · Trending up · data from PurpleAir
As of , the air quality in Yakima, Washington is AQI 25 — Good and rising — with PM2.5 at 4.5 µg/m³, the median of 5 live PurpleAir sensors reading 2 to 46. Canairy's verdict: Breathe easy.
For scale, that PM2.5 reading is below 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
Pollen today in Yakima: weeds pollen is the strongest of the three at a very high level, from Google's pollen forecast. Canairy shows the tree, grass and weed forecast beside the air reading on every plan, including the free one.
Free to download · Live data from PurpleAir & public monitors
Live PurpleAir sensor map for Yakima and Selah, Union Gap, Naches, Moxee. Every dot is a real sensor, color-coded by current air quality.
Sensor by sensor in Yakima
The sensors Canairy reads in Yakima agree right now — all 5 sit in the Good band, a 44-point spread — so the city-wide number is a fair description of the whole area today.
| From city center | AQI | Category |
|---|---|---|
| 2.7 mi SW | 11 | Good |
| 2.9 mi W | 39 | Good |
| 3.1 mi S | 25 | Good |
| 4.9 mi NW | 2 | Good |
| 5.1 mi SE | 46 | Good |
Yakima sits in a farm valley ringed by ridges, and that geography is the whole air-quality story here. In winter, cold air settles under a warmer layer and traps wood smoke and dust close to the ground for days; in late summer and fall, wildfire smoke drifts in off the Cascades, Oregon, and California and has nowhere to go. The valley has spent decades on the wrong end of federal particulate standards because of it.
What Canairy does for Yakima
A clear verdict
Not just a number — a plain-English call for Yakima: open the windows, or keep them shut.
Smoke alerts
A push or text the moment the air crosses your threshold — and again when it clears.
A heads-up before it's bad
Trend alerts catch the air turning, so you can close up the house before the smoke settles in.
Every place you care about
Home, work, the kids' school — across Yakima or across the country, on one screen.
The valley traps its own air in winter
Yakima's cold-season air problem is mostly homegrown. When snow cover or short days chill the ground, a thermal inversion forms: a warmer layer of air caps the cold air below and stops anything from mixing out. Wood smoke from home stoves, road dust, and vehicle exhaust all build up under that lid, sometimes for days, until a weather change finally clears it.
The Yakima Regional Clean Air Agency responds by calling burn bans during these stagnant stretches. Under a Stage 1 ban, all outdoor burning stops countywide and only EPA-certified devices — wood stoves, pellet stoves and inserts — may still be used. A Stage 2 ban stops every solid fuel burning device, certified stoves and pellet stoves included, unless wood is a household's only source of heat and the agency approved an exemption before the heating season. It is a real, recurring problem, not a formality: the valley was designated nonattainment for coarse particle pollution in 1990 and stayed that way until the EPA redesignated it to attainment under a limited maintenance plan in 2005. That plan is still in force today, and it names residential wood combustion and road dust among the sources the county has to keep in check.
Wildfire smoke settles in and stays
The same walls that trap winter smoke also hold onto wildfire smoke in late summer and fall. During the September 2020 Labor Day fires, when more than 330,000 acres burned across Washington in a single wind-driven day, the Yakima Valley's air was rated hazardous, the worst category on the scale, by the state Department of Ecology, thick with fine particles blown in from fires in Oregon and California.
Those episodes are why Yakima's numbers swing so hard from one stretch of years to the next. In the American Lung Association's 2026 State of the Air, built on 2022 to 2024 data, the Yakima metro area averaged 5.8 unhealthy short-term particle pollution days a year and ranked 24th worst in the country — down from 13.8 days and 8th worst in the previous report, and clean enough that the area now passes for year-round particle pollution after years of failing. That improvement came from a run of lighter fire seasons rather than any change in the valley itself: the ridges and the winter inversions are still here, and the count climbs again the next time the Cascades burn.
It is farm country, and that shows up in the air too
Ahtanum and Rattlesnake Ridge split the county into an Upper and a Lower Valley, and the Lower Yakima Valley is heavily agricultural. Residents there and in East Yakima have long flagged a mix of local sources beyond wildfire and wood smoke: agricultural burning, dust kicked up off fields and unpaved roads, dairy emissions, and traffic. Air officials describe the problem as an accumulation of all of those things at once, not any single smokestack.
That combination is why East Yakima and the Lower Valley show up on the state's list of most overburdened communities. It also means a single citywide number rarely tells the whole story here, since a still afternoon near the orchards can read very differently from a breezy spot uptown. Checking the sensor closest to you is the honest way to know what you are breathing.
Yakima air quality FAQ
What is the air quality in Yakima right now?
As of September 5, 2026 at 5:10 AM PDT, the air quality in Yakima, Washington is AQI 25 — Good — with PM2.5 at 4.5 µg/m³, the median of 5 live PurpleAir sensors. Open the windows. Great for outdoor activity.
Is there a live air quality map for Yakima?
Yes — the map on this page plots every PurpleAir sensor in and around Yakima in real time, each with its own current AQI, out through Selah, Union Gap, Naches, and Moxee. That detail matters more here than in most towns: Ahtanum and Rattlesnake Ridge split the county into an Upper and a Lower Valley, and a still afternoon near the orchards can read very differently from a breezy spot uptown, so the sensor nearest you is a better answer than one citywide number. Save your address in the free Canairy app and you'll get an alert the moment your own sensor crosses into unhealthy air.
Where is the smoke in Yakima coming from today?
It depends on the season. From late summer into fall it is usually wildfire smoke drifting in off the Cascades or up from fires in Oregon and California, and the ridges around the valley hold it in place instead of letting it blow through. In the cold months it is more often wood smoke from home stoves and road dust, pinned near the ground by a temperature inversion — the stretches when the Yakima Regional Clean Air Agency calls a burn ban. In the Lower Valley it can also be agricultural burning or dust off fields and unpaved roads rather than a fire at all, so the live PM2.5 reading at the top of this page tells you more than the look of the sky.
Why does Yakima's air get so bad in winter?
Yakima sits in a valley ringed by ridges, and in cold weather a thermal inversion often forms, trapping a layer of cold air near the ground under warmer air above. Wood smoke from home stoves, road dust, and exhaust build up under that lid, sometimes for days. The Yakima Regional Clean Air Agency calls burn bans during these stretches to keep fine-particle levels from climbing past health standards.
What does a Stage 2 burn ban in Yakima mean?
It means no wood burning at home. The Yakima Regional Clean Air Agency calls a Stage 2 ban when fine-particle pollution climbs high enough to threaten public health, and it stops the use of every solid fuel burning device — including the EPA-certified wood stoves, pellet stoves and inserts that a Stage 1 ban still allows. All outdoor burning is banned countywide under both stages, outdoor fireplaces, fire bowls and fire pits included. The one exception is a household where wood is the only source of heat, and that exemption has to be applied for and approved before the heating season starts rather than during a ban.
Does wildfire smoke reach Yakima?
Yes, and it can be severe. During the September 2020 Labor Day fires, the valley's air was rated hazardous, the worst category on the scale, by the Washington Department of Ecology, from smoke blown in off fires in Oregon and California. The same valley geography that traps winter wood smoke also holds onto wildfire smoke through late summer and fall, so a bad fire season can bring days of unhealthy air.
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 5 curated PurpleAir sensors Canairy tracks in and around Yakima, 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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