The Slow Dwindle Of Daylight

While the "official" beginning of daylight dwindle was back on the summer solstice (June 21st), the later rising and earlier setting of the sun will begin to take notice over the coming weeks as the earth wobbles its way to give the Southern Hemisphere its fair share of sunshine over the course of the year.   We'll lose about two hours of daylight over the next 60 days and over five and a half hours of daylight before the winter solstice in December.

The dwindle of daylight is slow at first -- we'll only lose 47 minutes over the next month and sunrise will just cross 6 AM on August 3rd.   However, as the sun slips down the horizon the days will quickly grow shorter, losing two and a half hours between August 5th and October 5th, with the sunrise on October 5th occurring after 7 AM.   By the solstice, our day length will be a scant nine hours and twenty minutes.

While day length dwindles from here on out, our average temperatures don't peek for another three weeks.  You can thank the gradual heating of the earth's surface for that -- these days are still quite long through late July and the earth can retain a sufficient amount of heat to continue to allow temperatures to nudge higher on average through the latter portions of July.  

The good news for those who like long days is that we'll get them all back...next year!