Heather’s Weather Lab: Wearing Sunglasses on a Cloudy Day

Columbus, Miss. (WCBI) – Ever walk outside on a cloudy day and even though the sun is hiding behind the clouds, you still grab for the sunglasses? There’s a reason.

The sun is the brightest star in the sky. The light from the sun gets to Earth within just eight minutes and 19 seconds.

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And it’s those rays that make for brighter days, even when it’s cloudy – forcing us to put on our sunglasses. But why, on a cloudy day?

We asked Dr. Webb. She’s an optometrist at the Starkville Eye Clinic.

“You still have a lot of UV rays that are coming down from the sun that people used to think that the clouds would filter that out but they don’t. So the UV rays are still reaching whether the sun is out or the clouds are covering up the sun,” said Dr. Webb.

And the color of your eyes makes a difference as well.

“People with eye color is actually not the color of the eye it’s the amount of melanin that they have. It’s not actually that you have blue eyes and I have green eye, it’s that I have more melanin than what you do.” said Dr. Webb.

So that’s where the sunglasses come in handy. She says to make sure you  get a pair that has UV protection.

“UV protection is just a dip that the lens gets put into. So instead of the UV rays actually admitting through the lens, the lens that’s in the glasses actually absorbs the UV rays so it doesn’t get to your actual eyes,” said Dr. Webb.

If we don’t protect our eyes from the sun, that’s when trouble starts to come.

“You can actually end up getting cancer around the eye lids, you can get cancer on the iris which is the color part of your eye,” said Dr. Webb.

If you’re not a fan of sunglasses, wearing a brimmed hat would be the next best choice.