With today marking the official first day of winter, Chicagoans begin to brace themselves for the ruthless Midwestern chill soon to breeze through the city. Although Christmas is expected to be one of the warmest on record this year, we know that winter’s real might is hiding behind the horizon and will wake us from our fragile denial in the coming weeks.
It isn’t all doom and gloom, however, while we saw the earliest sunset of the year befall Chicago earlier this month, yesterday was the shortest day of the year meaning that from here on out days will get longer and longer.
On December 7 the sun began setting at 4:19 pm and continued to do so all the way through to December 15. Yesterday, Thursday, December 21, the sun rose at 7:14 am and set at 4:22 pm making the day length a grand total of just 9 hours, 7 minutes, and 44 seconds.
Now, with both the earliest sunset and the shortest day of the year, day length and sunset times only improve, despite the Midwestern winter’s imminent and unwelcome arrival.
Today will see a sunset of 4:22 pm and a day length of 9 hours, 7 minutes, and 4 seconds but the last day of the year will already have risen to a 4:29 pm sunset and a day length of 9 hours and 11 minutes.
By the end of January, the sun will begin setting in Chicago after 5 pm again and on the first day of February, we will be back to 10-hour+ days.
March 17 will be the day Chicago has its first 7 pm sunset of 2024 thanks to the clocks changing forward one hour and May 11 will then welcome Chicago’s first 8 pm sunset before the longest day of the year on June 20 sees a sunset of 8:29 pm and a total day length of 15 hours, 13 minutes, and 41 seconds.
More information can be found at www.timeanddate.com.[Featured image from Shutterstock]