Last night and this morning we enjoyed a beautiful sunset and sunrise!! Did you know we can actually predict a particularly beautiful sunset/sunrise? Let's take last night as an example. At 5:44 PM, Marc tweeted this: 

Should be a good sunset tonight. The skies clear from west to east just as the sun is going down. That allows the sun to sneak under the clouds and light up the sky!

— Marc Weinberg (@MarcWeinbergWX) August 27, 2019

The sun set last night at 8:20 pm and the pictures started rolling in.

So how did Marc know two and a half hours before sunset that it would be so pretty? It's easier than you might think and something you can teach your friends and family! Here are the ingredients you need: 

1) Clouds

Yep - that's it! There's more you need to consider, but the basic requirements are pretty simple. While you can have a pretty sunset without clouds, the most interesting and vivid sunset usually have some cloud features in the sky.

The clouds need to be clearing west to east over our area as the sun is setting (moving in west to east for a sunrise). We had both of those last night and this morning as seen in the loop above! While that may sound like a simple thing, it's not. The timing and placement of the clouds and the clearing/moving in are the wild card in sunset/sunrise forecasting. Here are just a few of the stunning pictures you all sent in on Facebook of the sunset last night and sunrise this morning. Thanks for sharing! 

You also need to factor in what types of clouds you are working with.  Higher clouds will usually create prettier sunsets because they are catching the sun's rays higher in the atmosphere. The light gets muted by pollutants closer to the surface of the Earth, so lower clouds don't usually create quite as vivid colors in a sunset. Higher clouds are also made of more ice and less liquid water; as the light passes through ice; it scatters a bit differently than through liquid and produces these colors.