Next week the sun will set during the 6 o'clock hour. How fast are we losing daylight?
Mid-September is when New York loses daylight at its fastest rate of the entire year.
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Autumn doesn't officially begin until Sept. 22. So why does it feel like the new season is already here? Is it because the kids are back in school, and stores are overloaded with pumpkins and Christmas? It could be Mother Nature playing the biggest role. Because in the days leading up to the new season, we lose daylight faster than any other time of the year.
Maybe you've started turning on the kitchen lights earlier, checking the time before heading out for a run, or realizing that the sun no longer seems to linger the way it did just a few weeks ago.
Specifically, Sept. 17 to Oct. 2, when we lose two minutes and 40 seconds every single day. Repeat that change day after day, and it becomes nearly 19 minutes of daylight every week.
We begin September with nearly 13 hours and five minutes of daylight. By Sept. 30, that has fallen to just under 11 hours and 48 minutes. This month we lose one hour 17 minutes of daylight. Compare that to the one hour we lose in August.
On Sept. 1, sunrise is at 6:23 a.m. and sunset comes at 7:28 p.m. By the final day of the month, sunrise doesn't arrive until 6:51 a.m. and sunset is already at 6:39 p.m. The last 7 p.m. sunset of the year is next Thursday Sept. 17.
The last 6 o'clock sunset of the year is Oct. 25 and despite all the talk in Washington about keeping Daylight Saving all year, the plan is still to push clocks back an hour on Nov. 1 and plunge us all into darkness before 5 p.m. for the rest of the year.
A sunset that once happened after dinner can start happening during the commute. The walk to the train that was still in full daylight can suddenly take place under a darker sky. Weekend plans that depend on a long stretch of evening sunshine start getting squeezed by the clock.
