Ask A Met: Why Were Sunsets Less Beautiful Last Year?

This week's question comes from Morning Brief reader Jackie in Seattle, who asks, "My Seattle apartment overlooks Elliott Bay. Clouds are a favorite thing. Is there a meteorological reason why there have been far fewer 'flaming' sunsets the past 12 months compared to previous years?"

Meteorologist Jonathan Belles: It might help to begin this answer with the ideal conditions for a beautiful sunset.

You want moisture in the air, but not too much and not too little. You want something in the middle. With too much moisture, you just get rain. That doesn’t lead to a good sunset, because rain clouds will just blot out the sky.

But you also don't want the sky to be so dry that all you're seeing is just a ball in the sky. You need something for that light to bounce off of.

The thing that we all go “ooh” and “aah” about is usually light bouncing off of clouds. The scattering of light through moisture is where you get the reds, the oranges, and the yellows closer to sunset.

This is one of the reasons that vibrant sunsets change depending on the season.

In the summer, you get more heat, which causes the atmosphere to expand, leading to more particles in between you and the sun. In meteorology, we call it thickness.

In the winter, colder air is more dense, so it sinks and you get less thickness, so there's less of that air for light to bounce off of.

We've talked about this before: A cold, winter night is better for stargazing. This is the opposite of that question. With more stuff in the atmosphere for the light to bounce off, a sunset will look prettier. (Yes, that even includes pollution.)

But to get back to your original question, I pulled the data for the last calendar year. In that time period, much of western Washington was drier than average by 5-15 inches in 2025. So, that would lead to less clouds, less moisture, and mean less vibrant sunsets in your area last year.

It’s always possible, of course, that we’re considering an anecdotal problem. We don’t always happen to look at the sky at the right moment for a sunset to be beautiful. Another person who just happened to notice a nice sunset at the right time on the right day might remember 2025 differently.

How have the sunsets been in your area? Let us know in the comments.

Do you have a question to ask the meteorologists at Weather.com? Write to us or drop a weather-related question in the comments below. We’ll pick a new one each week from readers to answer.