After our taste of fall-like weather on Saturday, I wasn’t ready to give it up on Sunday and am certainly not ready for this summer heat in store for us this week! But, alas, it IS still summer, and fall is still a way out. It’s just around the corner, yes, but it’s quite a wide corner to turn at the end of this (what feels like) long, summery road.
A few things tend to signal the end of summer for us: school starts, football is back, and our hours of daylight are getting shorter.
While it might seem like summer has come to an end because of these things, fall doesn’t actually begin until September 22nd. That means we only have about a month until fall, but also means we still have a month of summer to endure.
This is the time of year when our day are getting “shorter.” For reference, sunset on August 23rd is at 8:10 pm. By August 31st, sunset is at 7:57 pm and by the start of fall on September 22nd, sunset is at 7:20 pm. While it looks like we’re losing about an hour of daylight, keep in mind that sunrise is changing during the same time frame, too, getting later and later.
So, we go from having 13 hours and 29 minutes of daylight on August 23rd to 12 hours and 9 minutes of daylight on September 22nd. In total, we lose almost an hour and a half of daylight.
This, of course, is all leading up to the winter solstice on December 21st, or what is commonly referred to as the “shortest” day of the year with only 9 hours and 12 minutes of daylight.
But hey, at least by then it won’t be in the 90s with a heat index of 115 degrees!
