People get burned on the Panhandle on days that did not feel especially hot. Pensacola to Apalachicola has the whitest sand and the clearest water on the Gulf, and both of them are throwing ultraviolet light back up at you all day.
Sand and water are reflectors
Dry sand reflects somewhere around fifteen to twenty percent of the UV that lands on it, and open water reflects a meaningful amount too, more at the low sun angles you fish at. Clear shallow water over a white bottom is the worst case, because light goes down, bounces off the bottom, and comes back up through the surface.
That is UV arriving from underneath, which is a direction sunscreen on your face and a cap brim were never designed for.
The places people burn here
Under the chin, under the nose, the underside of the forearms and the backs of the hands. If you have ever come off a Panhandle day with a burn under your jaw and wondered how, that is the bottom of the flat doing it.
A hood does not fix the underside problem on its own, but coverage on the arms and hands does most of the work, and it is the part people skip.
It is not a summer problem
Cobia run the beaches in spring, snapper season pulls everyone offshore in summer, and fall inshore is quiet and clear. The water stays clear enough to sight fish most of the year, which means the reflection is there most of the year.
A breezy sixty five degree spring cobia day on a tower is one of the more reliable ways to get burned on this coast.
Cover, then apply
Sleeves and gloves handle the arms and hands, which are the two areas that take the reflected load and the two that sunscreen leaves soonest. Then sunscreen the face, the ears and under the chin, and reapply the underside more often than you think you need to.
The short version
- Assume light is coming up as well as down.
- Cover the forearms and the backs of the hands first.
- Reapply under the chin and nose, not just on top.
- Treat clear cool days as sun days, because they are.
Gear for it. Have a look at the Florida Panhandle, sun gloves or what UPF 50+ actually means.
