The changing daylight hours thread

[mb018538]

1 hour ago, ManiaMuse said:

Pretty much at peak darkness in the evenings now. The sun does not set any later here and evenings soon start to get lighter from about the 13th (albeit very slowly at first). I always see this as a milestone however small it is.

Sunrise still get later by another 10 minutes or so and does not reverse until the end of December though.

Absolutely, we're nearly at the bottom of the valley now....time to start our annual ascent to the mountain top in June. Once we hit the 28th March and the clocks go forward we have 6:30am-7:30pm daylight hours right until the beginning of September. It'll be here before you know it. Let's get some proper winter weather first though! 

[damianslaw]

10 hours ago, ManiaMuse said:

Pretty much at peak darkness in the evenings now. The sun does not set any later here and evenings soon start to get lighter from about the 13th (albeit very slowly at first). I always see this as a milestone however small it is.

Sunrise still get later by another 10 minutes or so and does not reverse until the end of December though.

Yes we bottom out on the 13th, hold steady until 19th and then see a slow pick up in the evenings, as you say have to wait until early January before the mornings begin to take an upturn.

Recent dusks have been very early, dark by 3.30pm, very miserable. The dark days before christmas continue..

[Summer Sun]

The shortest day of the year is here! The countdown to spring and the longer days begins.

[Climate Man]

11 minutes ago, Summer Sun said:

The shortest day of the year is here! The countdown to spring and the longer days begins.

Problem is that I love to get snow whilst sun is at a premium. Window is only really December and January. 

[Lauren]

2 hours ago, Summer Sun said:

The shortest day of the year is here! The countdown to spring and the longer days begins.

Truly, the most wonderful time of the year!

[4wd]

Worth noting the true solstice is about 4am tomorrow, in fact the 22nd will be a massive 1 second shorter than today.
By Christmas you can just about notice the extra five minutes or so before sunset.

The short days and general gloom are the worst thing about winter in the UK, but through January the return of light starts to accelerate quite rapidly
By February given a calm sunny day it suddenly becomes noticeable the power is returning.

[NUT]

Just starting to notice a change in the length of daylight here although tiddly at the moment it will accelerate soon enough

[ManiaMuse]

Looking forward to the solstice tomorrow and knowing that things are starting to improve (albeit slowly at first and the mornings still get darker until the end of December).

Soon enough it will be February and we will be gaining 4+ minutes of daylight per day.

[damianslaw]

Yes a turning point today, we will start to notice ever so slightly increasing light levels in the evening, especially under clear skies, but the effects don't really become notable until the New Year, and this year the outlook is a very gloomy grey one. Mornings continue to get dark though until New Year. Thank goodness for christmas to take away from the gloom - this is a very miserable time for those who like sunshine and light.

[Daniel*]

15 hours ago, Summer Sun said:

The shortest day of the year is here! The countdown to spring and the longer days begins.

Wrong the shortest day of year falls today on 22nd first it hasn’t fallen on 21st in 4 years.

[Lauren]

I've already seen people on social media saying they can already see a difference in evening light 

Edited December 22, 2019 by Lauren

[Summer Sun]

 

[ManiaMuse]

19 hours ago, Lauren said:

I've already seen people on social media saying they can already see a difference in evening light 

It's psychological mostly at this point although we are up by 3 minutes on the darkest evening now!

By January we do start to gain 10+ minutes in the evenings per week which can be quite noticeable given typical working hours especially if we have a very grey week followed by a week with clear skies at sunset.

[Dangerous55019]

Well, back on the 20th of December I thought I noticed the evenings a little bit lighter, but with all of the heavy cloud cover that we've had since the end of September, that could have easily have been lack of cloud cover... But this evening I witnessed the sun actually setting later than it was!
The pendulum is now swing back the other way again folks. 

[Dorsetbred]

8 minutes ago, Dangerous55019 said:

Well, back on the 20th of December I thought I noticed the evenings a little bit lighter, but with all of the heavy cloud cover that we've had since the end of September, that could have easily have been lack of cloud cover... But this evening I witnessed the sun actually setting later than it was!
The pendulum is now swing back the other way again folks. 

As you commented, once the cloud disappears we might just get to see the later evenings, right now we cant seem to get rid of the cloud or the drizzle...

[ManiaMuse]

6 minutes ago, Dangerous55019 said:

Well, back on the 20th of December I thought I noticed the evenings a little bit lighter, but with all of the heavy cloud cover that we've had since the end of September, that could have easily have been lack of cloud cover... But this evening I witnessed the sun actually setting later than it was!
The pendulum is now swing back the other way again folks. 

Yup, gained a whole 6 minutes of evening light here so far.

But you are right, cloud cover makes a huge difference to how dark or light the evenings feel for the next couple of months. Here's hoping for lots of clear skies in January/February (we deserve a spell of decent weather for a change).

[4wd]

The lightest evenings often have some patchy cloud, which reflects sunlight for quite a while after sunset - rather like a natural lantern.

[hillbilly]

We actually had some clear patches in the sky tonight and you could still see a little even at 16.30,Lovely.

[4wd]

21 hours ago, 4wd said:

The lightest evenings often have some patchy cloud, which reflects sunlight for quite a while after sunset - rather like a natural lantern.

This evening  afternoon there's a slightly unearthly yellow glow from a cloud layer illuminated from below.
Clouds are quite high with some breaks to the west.

Edited December 29, 2019 by 4wd

[mb018538]

2 more days and we're back the right side of 4pm for sunset time here, from the dark depths of 3:46pm from the 11-15th December Hurrah! Once you get towards the last week of January and we start to pull out to beyond 4:30pm at 3mins+ per day then you can really feel the difference speeding up.

[Azazel]

According to my phone, think the sun is setting 12 minutes later in the evenings. Will be a few weeks yet before I notice it I think unless we have a clear day which seems impossible lately.

[ManiaMuse]

4 hours ago, mb018538 said:

2 more days and we're back the right side of 4pm for sunset time here, from the dark depths of 3:46pm from the 11-15th December Hurrah! Once you get towards the last week of January and we start to pull out to beyond 4:30pm at 3mins+ per day then you can really feel the difference speeding up.

Sunset is the right side of 4pm here today

You are right, it does become more noticeable in late January as things speed up (and then I start to get frustrated that they don't move the clocks forward already with so much wasted daylight in the mornings).

[Lauren]

This is the first evening since the solstice I noticed the drive home being a little lighter.

[damianslaw]

Mmm still not really noticing much light gain in the evenings, despite having bottomed out 4 weeks ago, largely due to the lack of clear skies in the afternoon. Mornings are still very dark, and seem to take an age to get light, not until February start to notice light levels increasing in morning.

On a positive we have now reached the point when light levels in the afternoon start to increase even on wet overcast afternoons, clear sky afternoons by the end of the month can see light levels lingering up until close to 5pm..

Just need to get through the next couple of weeks..

[CheesepuffScott]

Clear skies today meant that it wasn't dark until after 5pm, with lingering light until around 5:15pm