Stargazing Tonight
Tonight's map has not arrived yet. It is made every afternoon around 4.
Darkest clear sky on the map, any distance
How it works
Every afternoon a script takes a map of how bright the night sky is from city light and lays tonight's cloud forecast over it. It averages the cloud over the hours that are fully dark with the moon below the horizon, because a bright moon washes out the stars as surely as a streetlight.
For each city it then looks for the nearest place on a road that is clear and close to as dark as anything in reach. It looks within an hour's drive first, and only if nothing there is dark and clear does it look out to two hours. A place has to be well inside the clear air to count, so a pick is never sitting on the edge of a cloud bank.
It is a forecast. Thin high cloud, haze and wildfire smoke are not in it yet, so look up before you drive.