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Nashville, TN UV Index Today

Modelled for · GMT-5

What is the UV index in Nashville right now?

1 Low

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

Today's peak is 7.9 (Very High) at about 12pm local time.

When is UV strongest in Nashville today?

UV in Nashville peaks at 7.9 (Very High) around 12pm 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 6 hours.

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

Nashville today, in numbers

Latitude
36.2°N — 80 of 121 from the north
Today's peak
7.9 (Very High) — 34 of 121 nationally
Peak arrives
12pm local (GMT-5)
At or above 6
4 hours, 11am to 3pm
At or above 3
6 hours, 10am to 4pm

The window from 11am to 3pm is the practical answer for Nashville 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 →

The basin that shapes particles, not sunlight

The terrain that decides Nashville’s particle readings has almost no bearing on its ultraviolet ones. The Central Basin floor runs between about 500 and 700 feet, and the Highland Rim encircling it rarely tops 1,100. That is a few hundred feet of relief spread around a ring standing miles out from the city: enough to pool cold air on a still night, nowhere near enough to put anything between the ground and the sun. Two points twenty miles apart in Davidson County take the same sky.

The one way the bowl reaches the index is through fog. Radiation fog forms in the Cumberland River bottoms on exactly the clear, calm mornings that produce the strongest inversions, and it sits low and local while ground a little higher stays in sun. It also burns off as the morning warms, so what it costs is the weak early hours rather than the maximum.

Everything else here is latitude and date. At 36.2 degrees north the June noon sun stands about 77 degrees above the horizon and the December noon sun about 30. That swing is wide enough that two cloudless days six months apart, over the same street, produce readings with almost nothing in common.

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.

Louisville, KY 154 mi · 38.3°N peak 7.1 Memphis, TN 197 mi · 35.1°N peak 8 Atlanta, GA 215 mi · 33.8°N peak 8

What does Nashville’s UV index mean today?

1 is Low. EPA describes low UV as needing no protection for most people. Today Nashville 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 Nashville 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 Nashville

What is the UV index in Nashville today?

1 right now (Low), peaking at 7.9 around 12pm 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 Nashville today?

Around 12pm 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.

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

Updated