Winter solstice: How much shorter the days are compared to summer
From Miami to Seattle, daylight has been shrinking since June. Ahead of the winter solstice, here’s how much daylight you’ve lost to later sunrises and longer nights.
A snow covered landscape is pictured near Starnberg, southern Germany, Thursday, Dec. 13, 2012. (AP Photo/Matthias Schrader)
As the winter solstice approaches, North America is closing in on the shortest day of the year — and in many places, the amount of daylight lost since summer adds up to hours.
When is the winter solstice this year?
This year’s winter solstice happens at 10:03 a.m. EST on Sunday, Dec. 21, the moment the Northern Hemisphere is tilted farthest away from the sun. It’s the seasonal counterpart to the summer solstice, which took place at 10:42 p.m. EDT on June 20 and was the longest day of the year. Everything since then has been a slow slide toward later sunrises and longer nights.
How big that slide is depends on where you live. In the southern United States, the change is noticeable but not extreme. Cities like Miami, Houston, Atlanta and Los Angeles see about three to four and a half hours less daylight on Dec. 21 than they did on June 20. In Miami, for example, the day shrinks from 13 hours 45 minutes of daylight at the summer solstice to 10 hours 31 minutes at the winter solstice — a loss of just over three hours.
Farther north, the daylight swing becomes more dramatic. In New York City and Chicago, the difference in daylight between the solstices is on the order of six hours.
Across the northern tier of the contiguous U.S., the contrast is even more stark. In Minneapolis and Portland, the difference climbs to nearly seven hours. In Seattle, there's about seven hours and 34 minutes less daylight on the winter solstice than on the summer solstice, a clear reminder of how far north the city sits.
All of that “missing” daylight shows up on the other side of the clock as longer nights.
The reason behind these big swings is the Earth’s tilt. The planet is tilted on its axis by about 23.5 degrees. In June, the Northern Hemisphere tilts toward the sun, so the sun takes a higher, longer path across the sky. By December, it’s leaning away, and the sun’s arc is lower and shorter.
When do the days get longer after the winter solstice?
The good news for anyone tired of shorter days is that the winter solstice marks the turning point. After Dec. 21, the days will slowly start to lengthen again. The change is small at first, just a few seconds each day, but it’s the first step back toward longer evenings as winter unfolds.
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