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New Orleans, LA UV Index Today

Modelled for · GMT-5

What is the UV index in New Orleans right now?

1.3 Low

EPA describes low UV as needing no protection for most people.

Today's peak is 8 (Very High) at about 1pm local time.

When is UV strongest in New Orleans today?

UV in New Orleans peaks at 8 (Very High) around 1pm local time (GMT-5). It stays at 6 or above — the high band — for 4 hours, roughly 11am to 3pm. UV is 3 or above for 7 hours.

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

New Orleans today, in numbers

Latitude
29.9°N — 114 of 121 from the north
Today's peak
8 (Very High) — 31 of 121 nationally
Peak arrives
1pm local (GMT-5)
At or above 6
4 hours, 11am to 3pm
At or above 3
7 hours, 10am to 5pm

The window from 11am to 3pm is the practical answer for New Orleans today. Nationally today the spread runs 11.4 in Hilo (20°N) to 1.3 in Fargo (47°N). Why latitude and the clock decide this →

Live oaks hold their shade through the winter

New Orleans runs its year at 29.95°N, and the figure worth knowing here is the winter one. At the December solstice the midday sun still reaches about 37 degrees above the horizon, so there is no stretch of the calendar when the index drops the way it does across the northern tier. The season most of the country treats as inert is not inert here.

The other thing that separates ground-level exposure in this city is the tree. Southern live oak is semi-evergreen, holding most of its leaves through the winter rather than dropping them, and New Orleans is built underneath it. City Park carries what is described as the world’s largest collection of mature live oaks, several of them estimated at many centuries old, and St. Charles Avenue and the Garden District run under close to continuous canopy. In a deciduous city, winter strips the shade off the sidewalk exactly when the low sun starts coming in sideways. Here the canopy shading a street in July is still shading it in January.

The exception is the lakefront. Lake Pontchartrain forms the city’s northern boundary, 630 square miles of open brackish water measuring some 24 miles from its south shore to its north, and the levee top and shoreline parks along it carry almost no cover at all.

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.

Houston, TX 317 mi · 29.8°N peak 8.6 Memphis, TN 359 mi · 35.1°N peak 8 Atlanta, GA 425 mi · 33.8°N peak 8

What does New Orleans’s UV index mean today?

1.3 is Low. EPA describes low UV as needing no protection for most people. Today New Orleans also reaches Very 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 New Orleans 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 →

Questions about UV in New Orleans

What is the UV index in New Orleans today?

1.3 right now (Low), peaking at 8 around 1pm local time. UV stays at 6 or above for 4 hours, from about 11am to 3pm. This is a modelled value, not a ground measurement.

When is UV strongest in New Orleans today?

Around 1pm local time (GMT-5), not at noon — solar noon drifts across a timezone and daylight saving moves it later on the clock.

Is this measured or modelled?

Modelled. The figures come from the Copernicus atmosphere model via Open-Meteo, unlike the AQI on our air-quality pages, which is read from an EPA regulatory monitor. Cloud cover is where a UV model is weakest.

New Orleans air qualityThe AQI, from a regulatory monitor rather than a model UV across the USWhere New Orleans sits against every metro we track

Updated