Some seats, yes. For a typical July 1:10 PM day game at Jack Trice Stadium, roughly 37% of the seating bowl is shaded on average across the event. Shade grows through the late afternoon; by 6:00 PM about 68% of seats are out of the sun.
Check YOUR seat for YOUR event →Typical July afternoon highs at Jack Trice Stadium are around 84°F. Shaded seats make a real comfort difference.
No. Jack Trice Stadium is open air.
Jack Trice Stadium (Ames, IA) is oriented 177° from true north. We compute the sun's exact position for your date and start time and run it against the seating geometry, plus live schedules and an hour-by-hour forecast on the interactive site.
Interactive shade map for Jack Trice Stadium · Satellite shadow view
Ames offers one of the gentler September sits in major college football. Afternoons at Jack Trice Stadium average 80°F in August and 78°F in September, warm, not punishing, which makes the sun here a comfort question rather than a safety one. It's still a real question: the stadium is an open bowl, and at an early-afternoon kickoff in high summer the sun stands 69 degrees up, nearly due south, leaving a game that starts around 1:10 PM with just 37 percent shade on average across 61,500 seats.
The covered club rows on the 200 level do the heavy lifting: sections 206 through 211 each hold about 50 percent shade across an afternoon game. The lower bowl takes the sun nearly head-on, sections 120, 116, and 131 average 29 percent shade, and 130 comes in at 26. If you burn easily or you're bringing kids to a noon kickoff in the season's first month, the club level is the comfortable answer; otherwise a hat and sunscreen genuinely cover the gap in this climate.
From 6 PM onward, 68 percent of Jack Trice Stadium sits in shade. The midsummer sun sets late in central Iowa, 8:48 PM, and by 7 PM it's down to 17 degrees above the horizon in the west-northwest, so an evening kickoff plays out almost entirely in shade with a stretch of low golden light across the upper rows early on. September night games in Ames are close to ideal football weather: the day's warmth holding, the sun gone, no coat needed yet.
Enjoy the mildness while it lasts, because Iowa doesn't ease into winter. October afternoons drop to 67°F, November to 50°F, and late-season games at Jack Trice, named for the Iowa State player whose memory the university chose to put on the building, are about wind and cold, with sun on your section suddenly the thing you're hoping for. The practical seasonal split: covered seats or sunscreen through September, layers and a preference for the sunny side from mid-October on.
For any specific Saturday, the interactive shade map shows exactly where the shade line falls in your section at your kickoff time, useful in both directions, dodging the sun in September or chasing it in November.
Upcoming events at Jack Trice Stadium are ticketed on TixBit. Check the shade map first, then grab a seat on the shady side.