The dust season runs December to February
Averaged over the model's 2023–2026 record for this point, the daily US EPA index comes out near 150 in January, 147 in February and 141 in December — against 61 to 64 from July to September, when the rains wash the air. Nine January days in ten were above 100, the level at which the EPA begins advising sensitive groups to cut back on time outdoors, and about half of all December and February days were above 150, the Unhealthy band for everybody. November, the month the season turns, averages 98, with about a third of days above 100. The single worst day in the record was 20 February 2026. These are modelled figures for the grid square around the town, not a station record.
Two different hazes, and this page says which
Through the harmattan months the model splits roughly evenly between them. About a quarter to a third of hours read as coarse dust — the Sahara, lifted and carried — and a similar share read as fine particles, which is what burning makes: cooking fires, dry-season bush burning, and the generators that run when the supply goes. The split is worth knowing because the two do different things. Coarse dust irritates the eyes, nose and throat and settles on everything; the fine fraction is small enough to reach deep into the lungs, which is why it is the one health advice is usually written around. The coarse-particle card below is here for the first kind, and the line with it names whichever is dominant now.
Nobody measures the air in Lokoja
There is no reference monitor in the town. IQAir's own Lokoja page invites residents to be the first to contribute a reading, which is as clear a statement of the gap as there is — so every air figure published for Lokoja, on this page and anywhere else, comes out of a model. This one is Copernicus CAMS, read through Open-Meteo at a resolution of roughly 11 km. Take it as the picture over the town, and keep in mind what a model that size cannot see: a generator running two metres from where you are sitting, a refuse fire at the end of the street, the dust a lorry lifts off an unpaved road.
NiMet is the official word, and it speaks by region
The Nigerian Meteorological Agency publishes the daily outlook and the dust-haze advisories that the radio and the papers carry. In the outlook it released on Sunday 25 January 2026, reported the next day by nairametrics.com, it put sunny and hazy skies over the north-central region — which is Kogi — throughout the three-day period, and urged people with asthma and other respiratory conditions to exercise caution; it describes dust haze as fine desert dust carried on the wind, sometimes cutting visibility below 1,000 metres. NiMet forecasts for regions and states rather than for single towns, so its advisory and the hourly figures here answer slightly different questions. Where they disagree, NiMet is the one to follow.