Weather apps are built to answer "will I get wet?" Photographers need a different question: "what will the light do?" The two things that matter most are cloud cover and how clean the air is, and Lightpath pulls both into the Shot Score. This guide explains how to read them.
The Clouds bar comes from Apple Weather's hourly cloud-cover forecast. The score treats cover up to about 30% as neutral and penalises it above that. This matches what sunsets actually do:
The forecast gives a percentage, not a cloud type, so use the number as a prompt: at 40% cover, check a satellite or radar loop to see whether the cloud is high and thin or low and solid, and whether the western horizon is clear at sunset (the light has to get under the cloud deck).
Lightpath's Best next 24 h readout already folds cloud cover into the search, so if two golden hours are available it will point you at the clearer one.
The Air bar uses Open-Meteo's US AQI, a 0–500 scale where 0–50 is Good. Particulates scatter blue light and mute contrast, so a high AQI means:
A moderate amount of haze is not always bad. Layered mountain scenes rely on aerial perspective — each ridge lighter than the one in front — and a little haze exaggerates it. Wildfire smoke, on the other hand, produces a red disc and nothing else. The number tells you which you have.
Under the four bars, Lightpath states where the numbers came from. clouds via Apple Weather · air via Open-Meteo means live data. cloud and air are sample values until the forecast loads means the forecast has not arrived — you are offline, or the request failed — and only the Light bar is real. Do not plan a trip on sample values.
Forecasts are cached for 30 minutes per location per day, so the app does not hammer the network while you scrub the timeline.
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