Washington, DC UV Index Today

Hour by hour today

Local time, midnight to midnight. Bar colour is the EPA UV band, never restyled.

Washington today, in numbers

Latitude

38.9°N — 65 of 121 from the north

Today's peak

5.5 (High) — 102 of 121 nationally

Peak arrives

2pm local (GMT-4)

At or above 6

not today

At or above 3

2 hours, 1pm to 3pm

Washington never reaches the high band today; the midday hours still warrant a hat. Nationally today the spread runs 10.9 in Tucson (32°N) to 1.5 in Anchorage (61°N). Why latitude and the clock decide this →

Nearest metros we model

UV changes with latitude, not with a city boundary, so a neighbour a hundred miles north reads differently for a reason.

Where Washington sits on the scale

2.1 is Low. No protection needed for most people. Today Washington also reaches High at its peak — a different band from the one it is in right now, which is why the hour matters as much as the day.

The scale is open-ended: 11 is where the named bands stop, not the maximum. All five bands, with the EPA guidance for each →

Modelled, not measured

The UV figures for Washington are computed by the Copernicus atmosphere model, not read off an instrument here — unlike the AQI on our air-quality pages, which comes from a regulatory monitor. Cloud is where a UV model is weakest. What that means in practice →