Brighter evenings with later sunset times this week
Sunset times move later before the winter solstice
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Something happened this week that you probably haven’t noticed yet. The sun started setting ever so slightly later in Minnesota.
The shortest daylight occurs on the winter solstice on Dec. 21. But sunset times in Minnesota actually start moving later before the winter solstice.
Here’s the December sun chart from timeadndate.com.
Earth’s quirky geometry
I wrote earlier this month in greater detail about why Earth’s axial tilt and elliptical orbit play tricks with sunrise and sunset times around the solstices.
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This week we are now in full later sunset mode. The sunset at 4:31 pm in the Twin Cities last Saturday. It sets at 4:34 pm this Saturday. That’s a full 3 minutes later for sunset this week.
By Christmas day the sunset time is 4:36 pm. By New Year’s Eve, it’s 4:41 pm. So we gain a full 10 minutes of daylight on the sunset side in the last half of January!
Your evening commute home gets noticeably brighter on sunny days in the next two weeks.
Silver linings, people.
