# Virginia air quality today — live AQI by metro > Source: https://breathecheck.com/air-quality/us/virginia/ > Live AQI for 2 Virginia metros, updated hourly from EPA AirNow. Where the state's air is worst right now, and how far apart its cities are. # Virginia air quality today Updated 14 Sep 2026, 22:12 UTC · LIVE 2 metros tracked Across the 2 Virginia metros BreatheCheck measures, air is worst right now in Virginia Beach at AQI 46 (Good) and cleanest in Richmond at AQI 39 . ## Which Virginia city has the worst air quality right now? | # | Metro | AQI | UV now | Dominant | | 1 | Virginia Beach no page yet | 46 Good | 0.3 | PM2.5 | | 2 | Richmond no page yet | 39 Good | 0.4 | O3 | ## What is the UV index in Virginia today? The strongest UV in Virginia today is 6.8 (High) in Richmond, arriving around 1pm local time. The mildest of the 2 metros we model here peaks at 6.6 in Virginia Beach. UV is modelled, not measured — unlike the AQI above it, which comes off an instrument. Hour by hour in Virginia Beach → ## Ozone at the two edges, suburbs and coast Everything EPA currently classifies as ozone nonattainment in Virginia sits in the northern suburbs, and in regulatory terms it is not a Virginia area at all: Arlington, Fairfax, Loudoun and Prince William counties, with Alexandria, Fairfax City, Falls Church, Manassas and Manassas Park, form the Virginia share of the Washington DC-MD-VA area, classified marginal under the 2015 standard. Ozone is the product of sunlight working on emissions over hours, so the place it is measured and the place it was caused are separate by design. The coastal end runs on its own mechanism. Around Hampton Roads and the lower Chesapeake, an afternoon bay breeze can turn the wind and bring air back over land that spent midday sitting over water, so the oceanfront, the bay side and the inland neighborhoods can post different numbers within one metro on the same afternoon. The Department of Environmental Quality publishes a daily forecast and issues Action Day alerts; an exceedance is an eight-hour average above 70 parts per billion, which is EPA’s threshold rather than the state’s. One piece of the map has no city in it. EPA designated the parts of Madison and Page counties lying inside Shenandoah National Park nonattainment for the 1997 ozone standard in 2004, redesignated the area to maintenance in 2006, and Virginia has since filed a second maintenance plan covering it. Nothing here covers that ridge. The pages on this site sit where the metros sit, which in this state means the two ends and not the middle. ## Where do these Virginia readings come from? 2 of the 2 metros here report from a named regulatory monitor — Hampton Roads, Richmond. The dominant pollutant across Virginia today is PM2.5 in some metros, O3 in others. We track 2 metropolitan areas in Virginia, not the whole state, and none of them has its own page yet — we publish a metro page where searches for it clear a floor, and none here does, though every one is measured hourly. 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 Virginia looks wrong the answer is often next door. ## Related Updated 14 Sep 2026, 22:12 UTC