West Ocean City, Maryland Air Quality

An Air Quality Alert is issued by the National Weather Service on behalf of a state or local agency when pollution is expected to reach a level that harms health. An Air Stagnation Advisory means the air will not move enough to clear what is already in it.

None are in force near West Ocean City right now. All Maryland warnings.

Good

Nearest monitor

LEWES, 31 miles away (site 100051003)

Index measured

20 · Good

Measured at

Wed, 12:00 PM EDT

Ozone

26 ppb

Reporting area

Sussex County, DE, 29 miles away

Reported by

Delaware Dept. of Natural Resources and Environment

Area index

27 · Good

Measured, not modeled. AirNow observations are preliminary until the operating agency certifies them, which happens months later.

Delaware Dept. of Natural Resources and Environment's own forecast for Sussex County, written by a forecaster rather than read off a model.

Written by Delaware Dept. of Natural Resources and Environment for Sussex County and filed with AirNow.

NOAA’s National Air Quality Forecast Capability, bias-corrected against monitors, for this town’s own coordinate. The worst hour ahead is an index of 46, Good, around Thu, 5:00 PM EDT, from the run issued Wed, 8:00 AM EDT. This is a model, not a measurement.

Fine particles in micrograms per cubic meter, ozone in parts per billion as an 8-hour average. The index for each hour is EPA’s: the ozone figure is already the 8-hour average the ozone index is defined on, and the particle figure is run through EPA’s NowCast, which is how an hourly PM2.5 concentration becomes an index.

NOAA’s Hazard Mapping System analysts drew light smoke over West Ocean City in satellite imagery today (Wed, 8:00 AM EDT to Wed, 11:00 AM EDT). That is smoke seen from above; it is not always smoke at ground level.

NOAA’s model forecasts near-surface smoke peaking at 3.4 µg/m³ around Thu, 5:00 PM EDT.

Smoke on the radar over West Ocean City

Good

Air quality is satisfactory, and air pollution poses little or no risk.

Who is affected

Nobody is expected to be affected.

What to do

It is a good day to be outside.

Index range

0 to 50

Category descriptions are the Environmental Protection Agency’s own.

What these numbers are. An index beside a monitor’s name is a measurement, published hourly by AirNow and preliminary until the operating agency certifies it. A category for today or tomorrow is a state or local agency forecaster’s own forecast for a reporting area. An hourly index is NOAA’s air quality model on a five-kilometer grid, not a reading from any instrument. Where a town has no monitor within reach, only the model figures appear, and the page says so.

The nearest towns with a page of their own, closest first.

• Ocean City, MD1 mile
• Ocean Pines, MD5 miles
• Berlin, MD6 miles
• Selbyville, DE11 miles
• Bethany Beach, DE15 miles
• Ocean View, DE15 miles
• Pittsville, MD17 miles
• Snow Hill, MD19 miles

Observations and daily forecasts from AirNow, the US Environmental Protection Agency’s program with NOAA, the National Park Service, NASA, tribal, state and local agencies. Hourly forecasts from NOAA’s National Air Quality Forecast Capability. Smoke analysis from NOAA’s Hazard Mapping System. Alerts from the National Weather Service. Index categories and breakpoints are EPA’s, as revised in 2024.