Today you can step outside and breathe in quality air.
But this time last year, the air was filled with heavy smoke from nearby wildfires, creating air quality alerts that lasted for several days.
"All that smoke is not here, thank goodness we don't have wildfires to cause that problem," said Knox County Health Department Director Dr. Martha Buchanan. "We had fires in the Smokies, we had fires in other places in Tennessee."
The smoke settled in the Knoxville area, likely because it is a valley between the Smoky Mountains and the Cumberland Plateau.
"We had a lot of smoke," Buchanan said. "You could smell it. There were days you could see it."
The Tennessee Department of Environment and Conservation issued several Code Orange and eventually Code Red alerts last November, meaning the air quality was unhealthy.
"Even for healthy people, the level of smoke we had last year could have caused problems," Buchanan said.
Buchanan said Knoxville has had some days of smoky air, but not for that long.
"In my career I haven't seen anything like that," Buchanan said.
On Wednesday, the air quality index shows that Knoxville's air quality is good. The Knox County Health Department keeps tabs on it each day.