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Weather|It’s OK, Chicago, Your Air Was Actually Fine on Wednesday
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/04/23/weather/chicago-air-quality.html
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Some popular weather apps had reported a dangerously hazardous Air Quality Index.
By Amy Graff
Amy Graff is a reporter on The Times’s weather team.
April 23, 2025, 7:52 p.m. ET
Readings from several popular weather apps had people across Chicago spending much of Wednesday wondering whether their air was safe to breathe — until the dangerously unhealthy levels were revealed to be a glitch.
Early in the morning, Google’s air quality map showed that Chicago had the worst air in the country. Apple’s weather app, too, showed that the Air Quality Index had climbed into the 400s, a reading so hazardous that people are encouraged to stay indoors. (The Air Quality Index, which ranges from 0 to 500, is a measure of the density of five pollutants in the air: ground-level ozone, particulates, carbon monoxide, nitrogen dioxide, and sulfur dioxide.)
To put that in perspective, that’s as high as the levels reached in 2023 when smoke from wildfires in Canada blanketed much of the East Coast and turned the sky in New York City orange.
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At those levels, people are advised to stay indoors, and Madeline Blair, 24, did just that. She checked her Apple weather app when she woke up and, seeing unhealthy air quality levels, skipped her morning walk. Ms. Blair instead headed down into her basement to retrieve her air filter.
“I live on the northwest side, and my area on the map was dark purple on the Apple radar, so I’m like, No thanks, I’m just staying inside,” Ms. Blair said. (That color would indicate the air quality is at hazardous levels.)
