About the forecasts
Chase the Sun helps people find promising nearby sunshine during today's remaining daylight. The weather finder is free: no account or purchase is required.
What the search actually checks
Type a town, city or postal code, share your current location with your browser's permission, or choose Pick on map. In map mode, click or tap a starting point and confirm it with Use this location before searching. Select map center is also available for keyboard use. Map selection does not require location permission. Choose a maximum distance from 10 to 100 miles. We sample eight directions at 2 and 5 miles first, then every 10 miles up to your limit. This is a sampled search, not an exhaustive check of every nearby sunny place.
Empty results distinguish forecasts that did not meet our sunshine criteria from too little daylight after arrival and unavailable or incomplete forecast data. Missing forecasts and unverified road access are noted where relevant. No sunshine found refers only to checked locations, not every place within the distance limit.
Road-access checks exclude unsuitable destinations where possible. Coastal and ferry-access options are experimental and off by default. Travel times use routing estimates where available and do not include live traffic.
Public-place lookup is currently disabled while a dependable destination-data source is evaluated. Searches return sunshine forecast areas, which may be residential or private, not verified public stopping places. Directions and map-exploration links remain available with access warnings. Check posted restrictions, parking, fees and opening hours before visiting.
The finder compares windows starting at estimated arrival or later. Regular two-hour windows require at least 35 predicted sunny minutes. Shorter last-rays windows require at least 20 predicted sunny minutes, a drive of no more than 30 minutes, and a drive no longer than twice the predicted sunny minutes. Both types require average cloud cover no higher than 70% and no wet-weather forecast code. When rain probability is supplied throughout the window, its average must not exceed 50% and no hourly value may reach 70%.
MET Norway does not supply hourly rain probability for many locations. We display that as unknown, not 0%, and never convert rainfall amounts to percentages. MET windows must have an explicit zero precipitation amount and a known non-wet weather code in every hourly period. If any probability is missing, each supplied hourly probability must also be no higher than 50%. These amount-only results carry a caution and rank below otherwise qualifying results with complete probability data. Missing cloud cover, precipitation amounts or weather codes cannot qualify. Six-hour precipitation totals are not substituted for hourly amounts.
All windows end at least 15 minutes before the destination's forecast sunset, or before the estimated daylight boundary for fallback providers. This planning buffer is not a guarantee of direct sunlight. For example, departing 90 minutes before destination sunset with a 30-minute drive leaves 45 usable daylight minutes after the buffer. The forecast must still predict at least 20 sunny minutes within the chosen last-rays window.
Hourly sunshine totals are prorated. They may describe scattered sunny breaks, not continuous sun, and cannot predict exactly when each break occurs. The best window may start later than arrival; inspect the displayed times before setting out. Longer windows are preferred among similarly promising results, with shorter drives preferred for comparable conditions.
Mountains, trees and buildings may block sunlight earlier than the listed sunset, including on east-facing slopes with a blocked western horizon. This finder does not currently calculate local terrain shadows. The 15-minute buffer does not compensate for a particular mountain or obstruction.
Sources and uncertainty
Coordinate searches accept latitude, longitude or a Map location label. A bundled GeoNames town list provides an approximate nearby label when a listed town is within 50 km. It is not a weather station, public stopping place or complete list of villages. The label never moves your selected forecast point. If the list cannot load or no town is nearby, coordinates are kept and the forecast search continues. Town data is adapted from the cities1000 dataset under CC BY 4.0; naming is done in your browser without sending coordinates to a town-lookup service.
Open-Meteo is the primary forecast source. NOAA / NWS and MET Norway provide fallback coverage. Fallback sunny minutes are rough estimates calculated from cloud cover, not supplied sunshine-duration forecasts or direct sunlight measurements. They are labelled on result cards. MET cloud cover comes from its numeric forecast; NWS cloud cover currently comes from forecast descriptions. Some sample points may have no usable forecast.
Optional rain imagery selects NOAA nowCOAST, Environment and Climate Change Canada, or DWD Germany according to the map center. These are free regional observation sources, not worldwide radar or arrival forecasts. The German layer contains observations only. Provider legends and observation times are shown, older imagery is flagged, and coverage gaps never mean clear weather. DWD data is used under CC BY 4.0. Source attribution does not imply endorsement.
Forecast caching normally lasts ten minutes; MET refresh follows its response expiry. MET time labels are explicitly marked UTC because this fallback supplies UTC timestamps rather than a destination time zone. Its remaining-daylight search uses the destination's solar day, so UTC midnight does not cut an afternoon short or include the following morning. Hidden tabs pause optional imagery. Direct weather requests expose the requested coordinates and technical connection information to the provider.
Forecasts are not guarantees of sunshine, safe roads, or weather conditions. Check current forecasts, road closures and local warnings before travel. Map links are directions aids, not safety assessments.
Optional restricted-area layer
The optional alien-labelled layer shows three selected public mapped outlines: Area 51 in the United States, Pine Gap in Australia, and RAF Menwith Hill in the United Kingdom. It is off by default. NOT ACCESSIBLE means no general public entry. These approximate OpenStreetMap outlines are not legal boundaries or a complete list of restricted land. Restrictions may extend beyond the shading. This layer does not validate destinations or routes. Obey official signs and access restrictions. The alien emoji is playful, not a claim about extraterrestrial activity.
The outlines are bundled with the site, so enabling this layer does not contact another place-data service. Boundary data and source references are available under the Open Database License, with credit to OpenStreetMap contributors.
Privacy and attribution
The app does not add visitor analytics or save persistent search history. Searches send information to third-party geocoding, forecast, routing and map services. Public-place lookup is disabled, so searches do not send requests to Overpass. Hosting services process technical request information. Browser location access is optional.