# Nevada air quality today — live AQI by metro

> Source: https://breathecheck.com/air-quality/us/nevada/
> Live AQI for 2 Nevada metros, updated hourly from EPA AirNow. Where the state's air is worst right now, and how far apart its cities are.

# Nevada air quality today

Updated 14 Sep 2026, 22:12 UTC · LIVE 2 metros tracked

Across the 2 Nevada metros BreatheCheck measures, air is worst right now in Las Vegas at AQI 51 (Moderate) and cleanest in Reno at AQI 43 .

## Which Nevada city has the worst air quality right now?

| # | Metro | AQI | UV now | Dominant |

| 1 | Las Vegas | 51 Moderate | 5 | PM10 |

| 2 | Reno | 43 Good | 4.7 | O3 |

## What is the UV index in Nevada today?

The strongest UV in Nevada today is 8.6 (Very High) in Las Vegas, arriving around 12pm local time. The mildest of the 2 metros we model here peaks at 7.2 in Reno.

UV is modelled, not measured — unlike the AQI above it, which comes off an instrument. Hour by hour in Las Vegas →

## A desert bowl that holds its own dust

Las Vegas is built inside a closed bowl in the Mojave, ringed by mountains, on ground where bare dry soil is the default surface rather than the exception. That makes coarse particulate structural rather than incidental: PM10 , mineral dust rather than anything burned. The valley was once a serious PM10 nonattainment area and is now a maintenance area, and the rules written to get it there are unusually specific about surfaces, naming disturbed vacant lots, construction sites, unpaved roads, paved roads and unpaved parking lots. Dust advisories still go out when thunderstorm outflow, frequently generated over Arizona, pushes dust into the valley from outside it. Summer adds the second problem: the valley failed to attain the 2015 ozone standard by its Moderate deadline and was reclassified Serious in January 2025.

Nevada has no single air agency, which matters to anyone comparing one part of the state against another. The Bureau of Air Quality Planning at the Nevada Division of Environmental Protection monitors rural Nevada only. Clark County’s Division of Air Quality, inside its Department of Environment and Sustainability, runs the Las Vegas Valley. Washoe County operates its own air quality management division around Reno. The two county networks publish their findings independently, so three programs stand behind what looks on a map like one state’s numbers.

Between and beyond them the state is basin and range, thinly populated and thinly monitored, and our own coverage thins along with it.

## Where do these Nevada readings come from?

2 of the 2 metros here report from a named regulatory monitor — Reno-Sparks, Las Vegas. The dominant pollutant across Nevada today is O3 in some metros, PM10 in others.

We track 2 metropolitan areas in Nevada, not the whole state, and 2 of them have a page of its own. There is no state-wide average here on purpose: averaging 2 metros into one figure would invent a value for all the ground between them. How we measure, and what we refuse to estimate →

## Neighbouring states

Smoke and inversions do not stop at a state line, so when Nevada looks wrong the answer is often next door.

## Related

Updated 14 Sep 2026, 22:12 UTC