Live atmospheric forecast
Afterglow models the solar corridor: live cloud layers along the sunset azimuth, atmospheric transmittance, and hard meteorological gates — turned into one inspectable quality index.
Tonight's outlook
Sunset quality
What is shaping the score
Diagnostic favorability at sunset. The published score is the gated multiplicative index Q = 100 · Gα · Tβ · Dγ, not a sum of these bars.
Plan ahead
Select a day to inspect its forecast.
The weather service did not respond. Try again in a moment.
Solar Corridor Radiative Potential · v3.1
Afterglow estimates sunset color potential with a deterministic radiative model. It computes the setting-sun azimuth, samples cloud layers along that solar corridor, and combines illumination, elevated reflectance, and atmospheric transmittance into one gated index.
G = I · (0.26 + 0.74 · R). Bars are diagnostic importance, not an additive split of Q. The published score is the multiplicative index above, after meteorological gates.
Color requires an open path for low-angle sunlight and elevated cloud that can reflect it. The model samples low, mid, and high cloud at 12, 35, 75, and 130 km along the sunset azimuth.
Visibility, humidity, and aerosol optical depth form a Beer–Lambert transmittance proxy. Clean tropospheric air preserves saturation; smoke, dust, and haze mute it.
Thunderstorms, fog, very low visibility, or a sealed low-cloud deck cap the index. Confidence also falls when corridor cloud fields disagree or the forecast is far ahead.
Weather and air-quality forecasts come from Open-Meteo, using national weather models and Copernicus atmospheric data. Method roots: Corfidi (NOAA) twilight color physics; ray-corridor geometry used in operational sunset models.
Forecasts change. Recheck close to sunset before making a long trip.