Kansas air quality today

Kansas has a pollution season measured in weeks. Ranchers burn the tallgrass prairie of the Flint Hills to hold back woody growth, and the Kansas Department of Health and Environment puts the timing at early to mid-April. Two episodes forced the issue. On April 12 and 13 of 2003, three monitors in Kansas City, Missouri read above the federal eight-hour ozone standard. In April 2009, smoke from Flint Hills burning contributed to exceedances of the ozone standard in both Kansas City and Wichita. KDHE and the agricultural community then agreed that a formal plan was needed.

The response is forecasting rather than prohibition. KDHE activates its smoke modeling tool on March 1, ahead of widespread burning, feeding fire data and current weather into a prediction of where the smoke will land, and issues air quality advisories for parts of the Flint Hills region during the season. The Flint Hills Smoke Management Plan dates to December 2010; a subcommittee started meeting in November 2024 to revise and update it.

Outside those weeks the state divides. Its eastern edge shares summer ozone with the Kansas City metro across the Missouri line. The western third is high plains, thinly populated and thinly monitored, where wind moves soil more often than it moves combustion products. Our coverage follows metros, so most of the state’s land area is described by neither the table above nor this note.