The Longest Day Doesn’t Mean Sunsets Get Earlier Yet

We've made it! At 12:24 this morning, summer officially arrived. And while June 21st is the longest day, it doesn't mean that it'll start getting dark out earlier just yet.

One of the simplest ways that I can tell how far into the seasons we're getting is whether I need sunglasses for my drive home or not.

I get out of work right around 8:00pm. So in the dead of winter, the sun has long set by the time I'm heading home. But as we get further into spring and closer to summer, when I'm wrapping up my workday I need to keep my sunglasses handy for my evening commute.

One of the things that I truly love about the first many weeks of summer at the shore, is when I leave our Seaside Park boardwalk studio on Friday knowing that I still have almost another hour to enjoy the summer sun.

So yes, today is technically the longest day of the year, with 15 hours and 36 seconds of daylight, but the sunset still gets a little later by a few seconds for about another week, and it doesn't start to get noticeably earlier until we're in the middle of July.

Sunrise starts getting later almost right away, with a 5:28am sunrise today, and a sun-up of 5:31am by next Friday.

As far as sunset goes however, it stays within the 8:29pm range until the first week of July, and then slowly starts to inch earlier by the second week of July.

And we still get to enjoy a post-8pm sunset for another month and change, until the second week of August, with Wednesday, August 9th being the last day that the sun goes down after 8pm.

To me, this is great news! Just because we're enjoying the longest day of the year today, we still have many more weeks to enjoy daylight well past dinner time!

Up Next - Check out a beautiful summer sunset courtesy of Skycam 927!