Too hot in the city? Cooler, and still sunny

FOMO Sun is usually about escaping the grey. In July the problem flips: Basel, Zurich and Bern sit at 30°C and more, and the question becomes where to go for fresh air without giving up a sunny day.

Here is how to use the app for that, and a few places that tend to work.

Set your sweet spot

Open the filters and pick the temperature you actually enjoy:

• Cool: 18 to 24°C
• Mild: 22 to 28°C
• Warm: 24 to 30°C (the default)
• Hot: 28 to 34°C

When home is above your sweet spot, a “Cooler and still sunny” list appears. Every place in it is at least 5°C cooler than home and keeps at least 90 % of home’s sun. It never suggests a cloudy valley just because it’s cooler.

The rule of thumb: about 6°C per 1,000 m

Air cools by roughly 6 to 7°C for every 1,000 m you climb. A 32°C afternoon in Basel (260 m) means something like 25°C at 1,300 m. That’s why the Jura ridges are the classic summer escape from the northwest: close, high enough, and usually sunny when the city is.

Places that tend to work

These are in the app’s catalog, with their altitude. The app tells you on the day which ones are actually sunny and how cool.

From Basel

• Wasserfallen (1,015 m): gondola from Reigoldswil, easy ridge walks
• Belchenflue (1,099 m): views over the Jura and the Black Forest
• Weissenstein (1,395 m): gondola from Oberdorf, long Jura ridge

From Bern

• Gurten (858 m): the house mountain, a funicular from the city
• Chasseral (1,607 m): one of the highest Jura summits
• Creux du Van (1,463 m): the rock amphitheatre, best early or late

From Zurich and Lucerne

• Uetliberg (871 m): quick and close, a few degrees cooler
• Sattel Hochstuckli (1,191 m) and Stoos (1,440 m): family hikes
• Rigi Kulm (1,798 m) and Pilatus (2,128 m): the big views, much cooler

Water at altitude

• Oeschinensee (1,578 m): a mountain lake above Kandersteg, usually far cooler than the Plateau

Go early, come back late

On hot days the best hours in the mountains are the morning ones; afternoon thunderstorms build over the Alps on many summer days. The app’s hourly bars show when the sun is forecast at each place, so you can see whether the afternoon is likely to cloud over.

City evenings, on the other hand, stay warm late. A summit dinner and the last train down is a good way to skip the hottest hours at home.

When nowhere is cooler and sunnier

Sometimes the heat sits everywhere, or the mountains are in cloud. Then the list stays short or empty. That’s on purpose: the app would rather say “stay put” than send you somewhere grey to save a few degrees.

Stay cool, and enjoy the sun.