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Memphis, TN UV Index Today

Modelled for · GMT-5

Right now

0 Low

No protection needed for most people.

Today's peak is 8.3 (Very High) at about 1pm local time.

Hour by hour today

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

Memphis today, in numbers

Latitude
35.1°N — 88 of 121 from the north
Today's peak
8.3 (Very High) — 45 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 Memphis today. Nationally today the spread runs 11.7 in Honolulu (21°N) to 0.8 in Anchorage (61°N). Why latitude and the clock decide this →

Albuquerque's sun angle without Albuquerque's air

At 35.15 degrees north, Memphis shares a parallel with Albuquerque, which sits at 35.08. On any given date the two take the sun at the same angle, and the index over New Mexico still runs clearly higher. All of that gap is the air column. Albuquerque stands above 5,000 feet in dry desert air; Memphis stands a few hundred feet up on the Chickasaw Bluffs, under a deep and usually humid column that takes its share of the beam before it reaches the ground.

The bluff is a red herring here. It rises 50 to 200 feet above the Mississippi floodplain, which is why the townsite was laid out on top of it in 1819, and nowhere near enough to register on the sun. The river below it does less than people expect too. Open water returns a smaller fraction of ultraviolet than pale sand does, so a wide brown surface adds very little from underneath, and what a resident notices as glare off the water is mostly visible light rather than the part the index tracks.

Cloud is the variable that actually moves the number. Deep convection is common from spring into midsummer, and it is the one local condition that reliably pulls a reading well below its clear-sky value for hours at a time.

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.

Nashville, TN 197 mi · 36.2°N peak 7.8 St. Louis, MO 241 mi · 38.6°N peak 7.3 Louisville, KY 320 mi · 38.3°N peak 6.4

Where Memphis sits on the scale

0 is Low. No protection needed for most people. Today Memphis 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 Memphis 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 Memphis

What is the UV index in Memphis today?

0 right now (Low), peaking at 8.3 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 Memphis 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.

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

Updated