Big Island Vog & Air Quality
Live air quality for Hilo, Kona and Ocean View, so you know which side of the island to breathe easy on today.
Clear air, island-wide
Right now all three monitors sit in the Good range. The trades are carrying the plume off the leeward coast.
· AirNow (US EPA) · preliminary data
Where the vog is right now
The plume drifts from Kīlauea with the trade winds, usually onto the leeward coast. Dots show each town's current AQI in the EPA's official colors.
Hilo
Windward · driven by PM2.5 haze
16GoodKailua-Kona
Leeward · driven by PM2.5 haze
27GoodOcean View
South · driven by PM2.5 haze
35Good
What today's level means
Air quality is satisfactory, and air pollution poses little or no risk.
Health guidance below is the EPA's own wording for this air quality level. It is general to fine-particle and gas pollution, not vog-specific medical advice.
What vog actually is
Vog is volcanic smog. Kīlauea releases sulfur dioxide gas; in sunlight and sea air it turns into a fine sulfate haze small enough to reach deep into your lungs. The eruption you are watching on the volcano pages is the source.
Trade winds normally push the plume southwest, so Kona, Ka‘ū and Ocean View get the worst of it while Hilo stays clear. When the winds go light or turn southerly ("Kona winds"), that flips, and vog can pool on the east side and up the Kona coast instead.
Who feels it first
People with asthma, COPD, or heart disease, along with children, older adults and pregnant visitors, react to vog well before a healthy adult notices anything. A sensitive person can have a hard day at a level that reads only Moderate.
If you have a rescue inhaler or heart medication, have it with you on the Big Island. A voggy day is not the day to leave it at the hotel.
Getting out of it
- The simplest fix is geography: on a voggy day, head to the windward side or up in elevation above the haze layer. This page exists so you can see which way to drive.
- Indoors, close up and run air conditioning on recirculate. Cloth and paper masks do little against SO2 gas; only a properly fitted respirator helps, and that is a step for genuinely bad days.
- Stay hydrated, and skip the hard hike or run when the air is up. If symptoms are bad, this is a doctor conversation, not a website one.