Yup, here we are at the shortest day of the year, for us in the Northern Hemisphere.
It’s a day I didn’t used to look forward to, but with a renewed passion for motorcycle riding a few years ago, I now look at today, or realistically a few days from now, as when the days start getting longer. The bike is stored in the garage until spring, but today gives me something to look forward to.
This morning the sun came up just after 9:00 am, and it went down about 12:28 pm.
Is anyone else watching when it goes down in their world?
I hopscotch through winter by noting the passage of:
-the day of the earliest sunset (December 8 or 9)
-the shortest day (winter solstice, ~December 21)
-the day of the latest sunrise (January 3 or 4)
-the day of the lowest daily high temperature (around here, the third week of January)
As each of those signposts passes by, I know things will be improving from then on as we move toward the spring, when warmth and light return.
Today sunrise was around 8:00, sunset around 4:15 here. I can’t figure out if the official Solstice is the 21st or 22nd … guess I’ll compare today’s times to tomorrow to find out.
So I looked up times for my hometown of Fairbanks today. Alaska time is -9, one hour behind Pacific time. Even though you can see from the below Fairbanks should be closer to -10 by longitude, the whole state is on -9, even SE Alaska. But SE Alaska is much farther south.
Sunrise in Fairbanks, AK
10:58 AM
Tuesday, December 22, 2015 (AKST)
Sunset in Fairbanks, AK
2:39 PM
Monday, December 21, 2015 (AKST)
OP would have to be somewhere in Nunavut on Mountain time to get that much difference between nominal timezone and the reported sunrise/sunset times. You couldn’t do it in Alaska, you can’t get far enough east from Fairbanks without running into Canada, and Yukon Territory is on Pacific Time.
Even Yellowknife has a sunset of 3:04 Mountain time today.
Depends on your time zone. It is Dec. 21, 1:49 PM in EST, but Dec. 22, 4:49 UT. Also the days of earliest sunset and latest sunrise vary quite a bit with your latitude. Here just north of 45, the earliest sunset was 4:11 for about 10 days but has already advanced 4 or five minues, while latest sunrise will be in early January.
Just had a play with the LunaSolCal app on Android. Here at 51 degrees north the latest sunrise is 8:07 on Jan 3rd. The earliest sunset was 15:55 starting Dec 7th and running thru the 18th. There was 1 second less daylight today than yesterday, there will be 5 seconds more tomorrow.
Sometimes in the middle of winter, that’s exactly where I think I am.
Hey, I didn’t think this would turn into “where’s Waldo?”:dubious:
Well let’s see, high upon a ridge, just a half a mile from…! I don’t know what I’m half a mile from.
Okay, confession: Very near Prince George, BC. Sometimes called the drug capital of Northern British Columbia. But we are really in the centre of the province. No where near the northern part.
I’m on the north side of a low ridge and when the sun comes up in the morning from behind it, it literally skims along the top, barely making it over. If I owned the property south of me, I would get a Cat and scrape about 50 feet or more off the top and gain an hour or two.
I am getting tired of winters, and don’t spend enough of them in warmer climates. One day I’m moving south. For good.
