The winter solstice is past!
Turns out, the solstice occurred on Sunday, December 21st at 5:03pm CST. At that time, the North Pole is tilted furthest away from the sun, before it starts to rally back. That means that longer days are ahead. For starters that's not saying too much... only 9 hours and 16 minutes of daylight which barely gives State Farm corporate employees enough time to get home.
The recovery toward brighter evenings is slow at first, but interestingly the earliest sunset is well before the solstice. On December 12 the sun set at its earliest time of 4:29, but sunrise times were still climbing, so that total daylight kept shrinking for several more days. In fact, sunrise will slip as late as 7:19 before it starts to fall on January 12. Because of this combined effect, it will be more than a month before daylight grows by as much as 2 minutes in a single day.
Dates to keep in mind:
March 8: Daylight savings time, when your Saturday 5:54 sunset will leap to 6:55 on Sunday.
March 21: Biggest daylight gain of the year, 2 minutes and 41 seconds. Also our 17th wedding anniversary, which would make it the year's brightest day all by itself.
June 21: Wake up by 5:26 and enjoy a full 15 hours and 4 minutes of (hopefully) sunny skies. Bring your sunscreen.
And so, optimists among us, settle in for a six-month joy ride ahead!
1 comment:
June 21 is on a Sunday to boot! No work to get in the way of enjoying the entire day - as you say, hopefully a sunny one!
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