Scottish Midge Forecast

The Scottish midge (Culicoides impunctatus) obeys three weather rules that generic midge guides often skip:

• Midges cannot fly in wind above 10 km/h (6 mph). Above about 16 km/h they're grounded entirely. Wind is the single most important factor — an exposed ridge on a breezy day is close to midge-free even at peak season.
• Midges are inactive below 10°C. Cold spring and autumn mornings are effectively midge-free regardless of other conditions.
• Peak biting is dawn (5–8am) and dusk (6–9pm). Night is safe (midges retreat to vegetation), midday is moderate, dawn and dusk are the hours that matter for wild camping and evening barbecues.

The tool fetches 7-day hourly forecasts from Open-Meteo (free, privacy-respecting weather API) and computes an hourly risk score based on the three factors above plus a seasonal multiplier. We then pick the peak hour per day and show that as the headline score, with dawn and dusk scores broken out separately for wild campers.

Seasonal reality check. Outside the main midge season (late May to mid-September), the scores drop to almost zero even on calm warm evenings. The west coast between June and August is peak risk regardless of any individual day's wind — pack a head net unconditionally in that window.