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Winter solstice occurs at 6:03 p.m. Sunday
By Scott Dance
The Baltimore Sun |
Dec 19, 2014 at 8:00 AM
The sun sets over Baltimore on Dec. 6, 2012, at 4:43 p.m., one of the earliest sunsets of the year. (Scott Dance / The Baltimore Sun)

The winter solstice arrives at 6:03 p.m., bringing the year's shortest day – with about 9 hours, 24 minutes of daylight in Baltimore.

The length of time the sun spends above the horizon always depends on latitude. On the shortest day of the year, there is about 10 and a half hours of daylight in Miami, 9 hours and 5 minutes in Boston and slightly less than 5 and a half hours in Anchorage, Alaska.

It's meanwhile the longest day of the year in the Southern Hemisphere, with 14 and a half hours of daylight in Sydney. The 23.5-degree tilt of the Earth's axis means while it's dark and wintry here in the Northern Hemisphere, it's the middle of summer on the other side of the planet.
The shortest day of the year does not bring the latest sunrises or earliest sunsets, though. We have already experienced the year's earliest sunsets, about a week and a half ago, and the latest sunrises await in early January.
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