Winter solstice brings Detroit its shortest day of the year. Here's when the sun will rise and set Saturday.
(CBS DETROIT) — The Winter Solstice arrives this weekend and, with that, so too does the season of winter. The Winter Solstice is our second solstice of the year, marking the shortest day, while the Summer Solstice marks the longest.
This is different from an equinox, of which we have two (vernal in the spring and autumnal in the fall) where the day is split evenly between daylight and night.
The solstice is at 4:20 a.m. on Saturday, giving us an almost full day of winter to kick things off. Sunrise is at 7:58 a.m., with solar noon not long after at 12:30 p.m.
Sunset arrives at 5:02 p.m., leaving us with a very short Saturday this weekend.
Dec. 20 and 21 both have daylight lengths of 9 hours, 4 minutes, and 46 seconds. However, on the 21st there is actually a daylight difference of less than 1 second compared to the 20th.
Despite these numbers, our latest sunrise and earliest sunset do not arrive on the winter solstice. Our latest sunrise is 8:01 a.m., which occurs every day from Dec. 30 through Jan. 7.
Our earliest sunset is 4:59 p.m., which occurs from Dec. 4 through Dec. 13.
In contrast, our earliest sunrise is 5:54 a.m. That occurs from June 13-16, while the latest sunset is 9:13 p.m., from June 25-28.
No matter what, winter is here, and we've already had a few tastes of snow. As we enter our winter months, it will be a good idea to have those shovels handy.
