Today's air in plain language, hourly — built for the basin's winter inversions and the heating-season smog.
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Košice sits in a basin, and in calm winter weather the air above it stops moving. This page reads the European air-quality model for the city centre, hourly, in plain language — and in season it covers pollen too.
Fair Fine for being outside, including exercise, for almost everyone.
Peak modelled counts for today. Hay fever symptoms typically start when counts pass about 50 grains/m³ — grass is the one that affects most people in the UK (May–July); birch is a spring tree pollen (March–May).
| Pollen | Level | Peak today |
|---|---|---|
| Grass | Low | 14 grains/m³ |
| Birch | Low | 0 grains/m³ |
| Day | Air quality | Grass pollen |
|---|---|---|
| Thu 30 Jul | Moderate | Low |
| Fri 31 Jul | Poor | Low |
| Sat 1 Aug | Moderate | Low |
| Sun 2 Aug | Poor | Low |
The city lies at about 255 m on the Hornád, ringed by higher ground. In stable winter weather an inversion lid traps particulates in the basin — SHMÚ's 2025 review called raised winter particulate levels the year's typical problem, and named household solid-fuel heating the biggest single source of bad air outside big-city traffic. The heating season (roughly late September to May) is when PM readings matter most here.
The steelworks (U.S. Steel Košice, becoming Nippon Steel Slovakia in October 2026) sits southwest of the city at Šaca. The monitoring station that has repeatedly exceeded daily PM10 limits in SHMÚ's records is Veľká Ida, just beyond the plant — worth knowing if you live on that side of town.
Slovakia's official smog warning system triggers on PM10 above 150 µg/m³ as a 12-hour running mean. Official warnings and the national monitoring network run at shmu.sk and on the dnesdycham.populair.sk map — this page is a model read for one point, not the official warning channel.
Updated . These are modelled estimates for the area around central Košice, not readings from a street monitor — air right beside a busy road can be worse than the area-wide picture. Official forecast: dnesdycham.populair.sk. Air quality data by Open-Meteo (CC BY 4.0), based on Copernicus CAMS.