Winter solstice arrives Thursday; daylight increases after
Longer daylight ahead starting this week.
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Welcome to winter solstice 2023.
The sun reaches the farthest point south in its annual migration on Thursday, Dec. 21. The solstice occurs at 9:27 p.m. Central Standard Time.
That means Thursday is the shortest daylight of the year in Minnesota and the Northern Hemisphere. In the Twin Cities, we receive just 8 hours and 46 minutes of daylight on Dec. 21. But notice how the sunset moves as late as 4:41 pm on Dec. 31.
The longest daylight of the year occurs in the southern hemisphere.
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The December solstice brings the shortest day and longest night of the year for locations in the northern half of the globe, like the U.S., while the southern half of the globe is experiencing its longest day and shortest night. Therefore, all locations north of the equator see daylight shorter than 12 hours and all locations south see daylight longer than 12 hours.
Space.com has more details.
The Winter Solstice, or the December Solstice, is the point at which the path of the sun in the sky is farthest south. At the Winter Solstice, the sun travels the shortest path through the sky resulting in the day of the year with the least sunlight and therefore, the longest night.
In the lead-up to the Winter Solstice, the days become shorter and shorter, then on the evening of the solstice — in the Northern Hemisphere occurs annually on the 21st or 22nd of December — winter begins, according to a NASA resource. From then onwards the days become increasingly long leading up to the Summer Solstice, or the June Solstice, and the longest day of the year.
Timeanddate.com has a great explanation of how the Solstice gets its name.
This is how the solstices got their name: the term comes from the Latin words sol and sistere, meaning “Sun” and “to stand still”.
Initially, the naming arose from observations of how the Sun’s apparent path across the sky changes slightly from one day to the next, which is caused by the same process as the subsolar point's movement described above.
In the months leading up to the December solstice, the position of sunrise and sunset creeps southward. On the day of the solstice, it reaches its southernmost point. After that, the daily path of the Sun across the sky begins to creep northward again.
So as you observe the solstice Thursday we can realize the days start getting longer again through June! Daylight will increase until we reach 15 hours and 36 minutes on June 21!