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Spokane, WA UV Index Today

Modelled for · GMT-7

What is the UV index in Spokane right now?

1.9 Low

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

Today's peak is 2.8 (Moderate) at about 11am local time.

When is UV strongest in Spokane today?

UV in Spokane peaks at 2.8 (Moderate) around 11am local time (GMT-7). It does not reach the high band at any hour today.

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

Spokane today, in numbers

Latitude
47.7°N — 3 of 121 from the north
Today's peak
2.8 (Moderate) — 116 of 121 nationally
Peak arrives
11am local (GMT-7)
At or above 6
not today
At or above 3
not today

Spokane stays in the Low band all day 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 →

A nineteen-degree December sun, and what follows

Nineteen degrees is how high the sun gets at midday in Spokane in late December. At 47.7 degrees north — the line of Seattle, nearly three degrees north of Minneapolis — that same noon sun stands about 66 degrees up on the June solstice. The figures are settled geometry, fixed before any weather enters, and a 19-degree December sun compresses the high-UV part of the year into a short middle.

What varies is the sky. Sitting east of the Cascade crest puts Spokane in the rain shadow, and its summers run dry and largely clear, so a July reading lands close to what the sun angle alone would predict, which is not the case on the coastal side of the same state. Late summer is where that breaks down. Wildfire smoke, the same haze this site’s AQI pages follow, scatters and absorbs enough to hold the index under its clear-day value on an afternoon with no cloud in it at all.

Elevation is a small term here. The city stands at 1,843 feet on the Spokane River, high enough to show on a relief map of Washington and too low to move the arithmetic much. Latitude and the state of the air are doing nearly all of the work.

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.

Missoula, MT 170 mi · 46.9°N peak 3.5 Seattle, WA 228 mi · 47.6°N peak 3.3 Boise, ID 285 mi · 43.6°N peak 5.9

What does Spokane’s UV index mean today?

1.9 is Low. EPA describes low UV as needing no protection for most people. Today Spokane also reaches Moderate 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 Spokane 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 Spokane

What is the UV index in Spokane today?

1.9 right now (Low), peaking at 2.8 around 11am local time. It does not reach the high band today. This is a modelled value, not a ground measurement.

When is UV strongest in Spokane today?

Around 11am local time (GMT-7), 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.

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

Updated