The moment a wildfire starts near you, you'll get an instant alert and simple tips to reduce your smoke exposure.
30xSmaller than a human hair
Fine enough to reach deep into the lungs. A MERV 13 is built to capture it.
It Doesn't Stay Local
Smoke rides the wind far downwind — you can get smoky air with no fire nearby.
Simple steps to reduce indoor exposure.
During smoke events, the EPA recommends upgrading to a MERV 13 filter — or the highest-rated filter your system can handle — to help reduce the fine particles smoke brings indoors. MERV 13 is the level most home HVAC systems can run while still capturing PM2.5, the fine particulate that makes up the bulk of wildfire smoke.
Over 70,000 wildfires burn in the U.S. every year.
Wildfire smoke can travel 1,000+ miles, affecting states that aren't even near the blaze.
Exposure to wildfire smoke can worsen asthma, trigger heart issues, and lead to ER visits.
Indoor air can hold more fine particles during wildfire events unless it's properly filtered.
The EPA advises using MERV 13 filters or portable HEPA air cleaners during wildfire smoke events.
Use the live wildfire smoke tracker and upgrade your air filters today to protect your lungs and your home.
Shop Filters For Smoke Protection
By Michelle Wan, Brand Manager & Air Quality Writer
Reviewed By: David Clark, Licensed HVAC Technician
Published: August 15, 2026 | Updated: August 15, 2026
The map above shows active fire detections and smoke plumes over your live air quality index. Filterbuy publishes these maps across North America, and Frisco broke our template: looking for the monitor driving the region’s 2026 ozone number, we expected a Dallas or Tarrant County station and got Frisco.
There is no forest near Frisco, and Texas timber does not begin for 150 miles, so a local forest fire is close to impossible. Bad air here is imported smoke in winter and spring, and locally formed ozone in summer. Check the AQI above. Once it passes 100, close the house, shut the fresh-air intake, run the HVAC fan continuously, and put a clean MERV 13 filter in the return.
Frisco is measured directly, not inferred. It has its own TCEQ regulatory monitor, CAMS 31, while most DFW suburbs borrow a neighbor’s reading.
That monitor set the region’s 2026 ozone design value of 83 ppb, against a federal standard of 70.
Two bad-air seasons, opposite fixes. Winter and spring bring particles, which a filter solves. Summer brings ozone, which only timing solves.
Three burn ban checks, not one: Collin County, Denton County, and a city permit inside Frisco limits.
The honest limit: no pleated filter removes ozone or carbon monoxide, ours included.
Almost certainly not a forest fire, because Frisco has no timberland to burn. The city sits on 69.1 square miles of former prairie farmland, with the nearest national forests over 150 miles east. A crown fire in East Texas is never a Frisco evacuation event, but it becomes a Frisco air quality event two days later.
What can burn here is grass. Frisco is roughly 87% developed as of early 2026 per the Frisco Economic Development Corporation, so undeveloped tracts still sit between finished neighborhoods, carrying cured grass through winter into spring. To confirm what is burning statewide, check the Texas A&M Forest Service incident viewer. One caveat: the AirNow map marks regulatory monitors and community sensors differently, and the two do not always agree.
Because it currently defines the whole region’s air quality status. TCEQ operates a regulatory station in Frisco designated CAMS 31, a federal-grade monitor rather than a community sensor. Most suburbs we write about have none, so their AQI is inferred from whatever station sits nearest.
As of August 10, 2026, the NCTCOG put the Dallas–Fort Worth ozone design value at 83 ppb, and the highest reading behind that figure came from Frisco.
Source: North Central Texas Council of Governments. Updated weekly during the March 1–November 30 ozone season.
Three conditions produce a hazy Frisco sky, and each calls for a different response. Guessing wrong costs you either a filter change you did not need or an afternoon outside you should have skipped.
Source: Filterbuy air quality team analysis, drawing on TCEQ forecast discussions and Texas A&M Forest Service seasonality data.
Winter into spring is particle season, and summer is ozone season, so the habit that protects you in February is the wrong one in August. Particles are a filtration problem: close the house, run the fan, keep a clean MERV 13 in the return. Ozone is a timing problem, because it forms in heat and sunlight and peaks through the late afternoon. Move the run, the dog walk, and the yard work to early morning. No filter will change that, including ours.
Possibly a different one than your neighbor’s, because Frisco straddles the Collin County and Denton County line. We went looking for a single burn ban map, as we do for every city page, and found a Frisco address needs three checks.
County burn bans apply to unincorporated areas, so they do not automatically govern what happens inside Frisco city limits.
Collin and Denton act independently, and not always on the same dates. If your address falls on the Denton side, a Collin County headline is not your answer.
Inside city limits, open burning requires a permit from the Frisco fire code official under Section 307.2 of the 2024 International Fire Code. A county ban lifting does not make backyard burning legal here.
Start with the burn ban map for both counties, then read the City of Frisco open burning rules and confirm status with Frisco Fire.
Once the AQI passes 100, close the house and run filtered air. Above that line, the air is unhealthy for children, older adults, and anyone with asthma or heart disease.
Close the envelope by shutting every window and exterior door.
Find and close the fresh-air intake. This matters more in Frisco than in older suburbs, because much of the housing stock is recent, built tight to code, and fed by a mechanical fresh-air duct into the return plenum. Look for a round insulated duct off an exterior wall with a damper lever. Left open, it pulls smoke indoors efficiently.
Run the HVAC fan continuously, not on “auto,” which moves far more air through the filter each hour.
Inspect the filter, because a loaded one restricts airflow and stops working. If the media looks gray, replace it today.
Install a Filterbuy MERV 13 filter sized correctly for your return.
Set up one clean room, ideally a bedroom with the door closed and a portable HEPA unit. See EPA’s clean room guide.
Skip the vacuum and the candles, since both put more particles into the air you are trying to clean.
A MERV 13 filter is the right choice for wildfire smoke, and EPA’s clean room guidance calls for that rating wherever a system can handle it. Filterbuy has manufactured pleated filters in the USA since 2013, and Filterbuy MERV 13 media traps 98% of airborne particles as small as 0.3 microns, the range that matters in smoke.
Two limits matter, and we would rather name them than sell past them. No HVAC filter removes carbon monoxide, a gas rather than a particle; if a fire is close enough for CO to matter, you need working detectors and evacuation guidance. And a pleated filter does not remove ozone, Frisco’s chronic problem. What we can help with is the odor lingering once particles clear, where an activated carbon filter such as the Filterbuy Odor Eliminator adsorbs compounds a pleated filter lets through.
I write these city pages one after another, and they land the same way: no fire nearby, smoke from far off, check the AQI. Frisco was the first where the monitor itself was the story. People here search for a fire perimeter when the thing degrading their air is measured a few miles away, on a hot afternoon, with no smoke in it at all.
Michelle Wan, Brand Manager & Air Quality Writer, Filterbuy
Texas Wildfire Response Ran 136% Above Normal Into 2026
Crews answered 434 wildfires burning 11,425 acres between October 2025 and mid-January 2026. Arrivals from the West brace for August and get caught out in February.
Source: Texas A&M Forest Service
Closing the Windows Only Gets You About Halfway
With windows shut and no air cleaner running, indoor PM2.5 still settles at 55% to 60% of outdoor levels. Sealing the house is where the work starts, not where it ends.
Source: EPA, Strategies to Reduce Exposure Indoors
Ozone Season Here Is Eight Months Long
The Dallas–Fort Worth ozone season runs March 1 to November 30, far longer than the smoke window most households watch for.
Check the live map above for active detections. Fires inside city limits are uncommon, and the ones that happen are grass or brush fires on undeveloped tracts rather than forest fires.
No, and we would rather say so than sell you one for the wrong reason. Pleated filters capture particles rather than gases, so filtration answers smoke, dust, pollen, and PM2.5, but not ozone.
In ozone season, early morning. Ozone builds through the day and peaks mid- to late afternoon, so a 6 a.m. run and a 5 p.m. run are not the same air. In particle season, the logic flips: check the AQI, because smoke does not follow the clock.
More often than the box says. Smoke loads a filter faster than household dust, so inspect it monthly during an event and replace it once the media looks gray.
Filterbuy builds filters, so treat us as biased on one point and straight on the rest: the map tells you what is heading toward Frisco, your timing handles the ozone, and the filter in your return handles the particles. Find your Filterbuy MERV 13 size, then set up auto-delivery so February does not catch you with a gray filter in the wall.
CAMS 31 (Frisco): TCEQ’s regulatory Continuous Air Monitoring Station in Frisco, a federal-grade monitor used to determine DFW’s Clean Air Act compliance.
Filterbuy: An American air filter manufacturer founded in 2013, headquartered in Talladega, Alabama, producing pleated MERV 8, MERV 11, MERV 13, and activated carbon filters in over 600 sizes.
About the Author and Reviewer
Michelle Wan is Filterbuy’s Brand Manager and Air Quality Writer, with a B.A. in Sociology from UC Santa Cruz, working directly with Filterbuy’s U.S. manufacturing teams. David Clark, Licensed HVAC Technician, reviewed this page for accuracy on HVAC operation, fresh-air intakes, and filter selection.
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