Wildfire Smoke Forecast Maps For Edmonton: How To See The Smoke Coming Before You Smell It

Every Edmonton summer now comes with a second forecast. There is the one that tells you if Saturday’s barbecue gets rained out — and the one that tells you whether the sky will be blue or beige when you wake up. The good news: wildfire smoke is forecastable, the maps are free, and they are made by some of the best atmospheric scientists in the country. The bad news: almost nobody knows where to look. Here are the exact maps and pages worth bookmarking, what each one actually shows, and how to read them together in five minutes over coffee.

Why You Want A Forecast, Not Just A Smell Test

By the time you can smell smoke, your indoor air is already changing — and your options have shrunk. The whole game with wildfire smoke is acting before it arrives: closing windows while the evening air is still clean, swapping in a fresh furnace filter, running the blower to scrub the house, cancelling the kids’ soccer practice before everyone is standing on the field squinting at an orange sun. A smoke forecast buys you those hours. On the flip side, the maps also tell you when a smoky stretch will end — which is exactly when you want to throw the windows open and flush the house with clean air.

FireSmoke.ca — The Hour-By-Hour Smoke Movie

If you bookmark only one map, make it this one: firesmoke.ca/forecasts/current. FireSmoke.ca is run by the Weather Forecast Research Team at the University of British Columbia, and its BlueSky Canada model produces an animated, hour-by-hour forecast of ground-level smoke particulate (PM2.5) for the next two days. Press play and you literally watch the plumes bloom off the fires and drift across the map — find Edmonton, and you can see whether the grey blob slides over us tonight, tomorrow afternoon, or misses us entirely.

Two things to know when reading it. The colours show micrograms of fine particulate per cubic metre of air (µg/m³) — the same pollutant your MERV 13 or HEPA filter is fighting. And the model only forecasts smoke from fires inside its map area, so smoke arriving from far outside the domain may not appear. It is a research forecast: brilliant, free, and worth checking against the official sources below.

Environment Canada’s FireWork Maps — The Official 72-Hour Model

Environment and Climate Change Canada runs its own smoke model, FireWork, at weather.gc.ca/firework. It maps fine particulate from wildfire smoke at ground level, hour by hour, out to 72 hours — a full day further than BlueSky — and is refreshed twice daily from overnight and midday model runs. Alongside the hourly animation you can pull up 24-hour average and 24-hour maximum maps, which are the quickest way to answer “how bad is tomorrow, overall?” at a glance.

FireWork feeds the same modelling family that produces Canada’s official air quality forecasts, so when FireWork paints a plume over central Alberta, expect the AQHI forecast — next section — to follow suit.

The AQHI — The Number That Tells You What To Do

Maps show where smoke is going; the Air Quality Health Index turns it into a decision. Canada’s AQHI runs from 1 to 10+ in four bands — low risk (1–3), moderate (4–6), high (7–10) and very high (above 10) — each with plain-language advice for the general population and for people at higher risk: those with heart or lung conditions, young children, older adults and pregnant people. Edmonton’s live reading and its forecast for today, tonight and tomorrow are on Environment Canada’s page at weather.gc.ca — Edmonton AQHI, with every Alberta community on the provincial summary page.

The AQHI is the number to organize your day around: it is measured (not just modelled), it is Canadian (built for our pollutants and our health guidance), and during smoke events it comes with Special Air Quality Statements when conditions warrant. If you only teach one resource to the grandparents, teach this one.

PurpleAir — Street-Level Truth, Right Now

Official monitoring stations are excellent but sparse — a handful of stations for the whole capital region. PurpleAir fills the gaps with a crowd of low-cost sensors on people’s fences and balconies, updating roughly every 80 seconds on a free map at map.purpleair.com. Zoom into the Edmonton area and you can compare your neighbourhood to the other side of the city — useful during patchy smoke, when Spruce Grove can be hazy while Mill Woods is clear.

One translation note: PurpleAir’s default colour scale is the U.S. EPA’s AQI (0–500), not Canada’s AQHI (1–10+), so the numbers will not match the Environment Canada page — green still means good and red still means bad. The sensors are also community-owned and less accurate than government monitors, especially in humid conditions. Treat PurpleAir as your “right here, right now” check and the AQHI as your official guidance.

Alberta Wildfire Status — See Where The Fires Actually Are

Smoke maps make more sense when you know what is burning. The province’s live wildfire map at alberta.ca/wildfire-status shows every active wildfire in Alberta with its size and containment status, plus fire danger ratings, fire bans and advisories. A cluster of out-of-control fires northwest of Edmonton plus a northwest wind in the weather forecast tells you tomorrow’s story before any smoke model runs. There is also a free Alberta Wildfire app, and 310-FIRE (310-3473) to report a wildfire in a forested area.

Your Five-Minute Smoke-Season Morning Routine

None of these tools takes more than a minute once you know what you are looking at. Here is the order we suggest:

• Check Edmonton’s AQHI first. Today’s number and tomorrow’s forecast set the plan: 1–3, live normally; 4–6, think about at-risk family members; 7+, keep windows closed and move activity indoors.
• Play the FireSmoke.ca animation. Watch two days ahead. Is a plume heading for central Alberta, and what time does it arrive? That is your deadline for closing up the house.
• Cross-check FireWork’s 24-hour maps. If both models agree Edmonton goes grey tomorrow afternoon, believe them. If they disagree, plan for the worse one.
• Glance at PurpleAir before you act. The forecast says smoke at 2 p.m., the sensors say it arrived at 11 a.m. — trust the sensors and close the windows now.
• Skim the Alberta Wildfire map when things change. New out-of-control fire upwind of the city? Expect the smoke models to catch up over the next run or two.

When The Map Turns Orange: Getting The House Ready

The forecast is only half the job — the other half is what your house does with the warning. Close windows and doors before the plume arrives, not after. Make sure a clean, high-efficiency filter is in the furnace and run the fan to circulate air through it; if you have a portable HEPA purifier, park it in the room where the family actually spends time. Skip the candles, the frying and the vacuuming while the AQHI is high — they all add particulate to air the house is trying to clean. We’ve covered the details in two companion guides: the best air filters for wildfire smoke and our full Alberta wildfire smoke guide. And when the maps finally clear: open everything, flush the house, and check the filter — a bad smoke week can age a filter a month.

Smoke Forecast Maps: Quick Answers

Links open official federal, provincial and university forecast pages in a new tab. Home Pros Group isn’t affiliated with these organizations — we cite them so you can verify the facts yourself.

This article is general home-maintenance information, not medical advice. Air quality forecasts are models and can be wrong in either direction; always follow current advisories from Environment and Climate Change Canada and Alberta Health Services. If smoke is affecting your health, contact Health Link at 811 or your doctor.