What Makes a Good Sunset in San Diego

A good sunset is a perfect collaboration between clouds, sun and earth.  What makes a good sunset?

There is no formula

Its hard to actually put into a formula but I believe the best sunsets are a combination of high clouds above, minimal cloud cover on the horizon and warm weather.  If there are low clouds on the horizon the sun will be obscured and if there are no clouds in the sky, the sunsets will be boring.

They come about every 45 days

Perfect sunsets in San Diego come about every 45 days.  Most perfect sunsets occur in October during late Santa Ana conditions.

Its hard to predict a  perfect sunset but if you see a lot of flowy or stretchy high clouds directly above about 1 hour before sunset you are bound to have a pretty good one.

Keep Trying

Tonight was close, but not exactly on.  There was lots of clouds overhead but by sunset they had mostly blown away.  I’ll keep looking for that perfect sunset.