Sand in the Coffee, Vol. 107: the sunset moves, and this week it moves out over the water

Last night I watched forty people do the same thing at the same moment. The sun touched the horizon, everybody held up a phone, the sun went under, and the whole beach stood up, shook out its towels and walked to the boardwalk like a movie had ended.

They left before the good part. They always do. So today: how the sunset actually works down here, because it’s about to change, and almost nobody notices.

the sun has been setting in the wrong place all summer

Our beach faces south. The sun sets in the west — roughly. In June it sets well north of west, which on a south-facing beach means it goes down over land: behind the condo towers, the dunes, the road. You get a nice glow over your right shoulder and a lot of people wondering why their Gulf sunset photos feature a parking deck.

The fall equinox is this week, and that’s the hinge. On the equinox the sun sets due west, straight down the beach. Every day after, it slides a little farther south, and by late fall it is dropping directly into the Gulf, over open water, with nothing between you and it. The postcard sunset people think they’re buying in July is actually a fall and winter product. The snowbirds know this. It’s half of why they come.

the clock part

Right now sunset is a little before seven, and it’s getting earlier by about a minute a day. That adds up faster than you’d think: by mid-October you’re looking at around 6:15. Then the clocks fall back on the first Sunday of November and sunset lands near five o’clock overnight, which is how you end up watching it with a happy-hour drink still in your hand. There are worse scheduling conflicts. /happy-hours/ has the four-to-six crowd on both sides of the line.

We post the day’s exact sunset time with the flags and the surf at /beach-today/, so you don’t have to guess or trust a condo fridge magnet from 2019.

the rule: be early, stay late

Here’s the schedule I’d hand a houseguest.

Be on the sand 30 minutes before sunset. That’s when the light goes gold and sideways, the sea oats light up, and everyone in your family looks ten percent better than they do at noon. If you want the photo, this is the photo.

Do not leave when the sun disappears. The color usually peaks ten to twenty minutes after it’s gone, when the light is coming up from below the horizon and hitting the underside of the clouds. That’s when the sky goes from orange to the pink-and-purple business that makes people text their sister. The forty people at the boardwalk shower are missing it with their backs turned.

Give it about 25 minutes total, then go. After that it’s just dark, and you’re a person standing on a beach in the dark.

reading the sky at five o’clock

You can call a sunset a couple of hours ahead, roughly:

• High, thin, wispy clouds: the best case. They catch the late light and hold it. If the sky at five looks like someone dragged a brush across it, cancel your dinner reservation or move it.
• Scattered puffy clouds: good, especially if they’re off to the west. Those are your canvas.
• Solid low gray overcast: it’s not happening. Go eat.
• Perfectly clear after a cool front: clean, sharp, orange, over quickly. Less drama, but that dry air is also when you have a real shot at the green flash — the split-second green blink as the last sliver of sun goes under. It’s real, it’s rare, it needs a clean horizon over water, and no, the person next to you who “sees it every night” does not.

If you’re on the fence, pull up the cam around 6:15 and look at the western sky before you put your shoes on.

where to stand

Anywhere on the Gulf side works once the sun is setting down the beach. Walk to the water’s edge and look west along the shoreline — the wet sand turns into a mirror, and you get the sky twice.

If you want it quiet, Johnson Beach on the east end of the Key is the move, since there’s nothing built on it to get between you and the horizon. It’s national seashore, so there’s an entrance fee and posted gate hours; check them before you plan to linger. Big Lagoon State Park, like every Florida state park, closes at sundown, so it’s a better sunrise-and-afternoon place than a stay-late place.

On the Alabama side, the beach west of Perdido Pass gives you the same down-the-shoreline view, and the Pass itself is worth a look at that hour, when the charter boats are in and the water goes copper.

what to bring

A chair you can carry one-handed. Something to drink that isn’t in glass, since glass is banned on the beach on both sides of the line. Bug spray, because when the wind drops at dusk the no-see-ums — the tiny biting gnats you can feel but not find — clock in for their shift, especially near the dunes and anywhere on the bay side. And by October, a long sleeve. The first evening you want one is a local holiday nobody announces.

That’s it. Show up early, sit down, and when everyone else stands up to leave, don’t. The second act is free and the crowd just walked out.

— Chris

P.S. If you run a place on the Key or in Orange Beach and it’s on this site, it’s yours to claim — free, always: /submit/claim/