Back to school sales, two-a-day football practices, heat waves that aren't as hot, and now, shrinking days. It's another sign of summer's eventual end for 2018.
Of course each day is roughly 24 hours, but let's talk about the amount of daylight each day brings. Our longest days happen with the kickoff of summer. This year, summer started on June 21st for the Northern Hemisphere, the proud home to Omaha. At that point, sunset wasn't until about 9 pm, giving us about 15 hours and 9 minutes of daylight.
Shortly after our longest day, we immediately start to lose daylight, but not very quickly. In the first few days of summer, we only lose about 1 to 15 seconds of daylight each day. That loss then accelerates... and it just keeps adding up!
Since summer started in June to now, August 8, we've lost about an hour of daylight, making sunrise roughly a half hour later and sunset roughly a half hour earlier.
That puts us down to 14 hours and 8 minutes of daylight each day now.
Right now, we are losing about 2 minutes and 14 seconds of daylight each day. The loss of daylight will eventually reach about 2 minutes and 43 seconds per day, helping us reach an equal 12 hours of day and 12 hours of night for the start of fall in September.
With shorter days and a lowering sun angle each afternoon, our chance of seeing more triple-digit heat will continue to shrink too.
