DENVER — Our days are starting to get noticeably longer, especially over the last few weeks.
Friday will mark Denver's first 5:30 p.m. or later sunset of the year, and we're only about a month away from our first 6 p.m. or later sunset of 2023.
Denver is gaining more than two minutes of sunlight per day, and we'll continue to accelerate the amount of sunlight we gain each day until the Vernal Equinox, which takes place on March 20.
Of course, we'll keep adding more sunlight until the Summer Solstice, or the start of summer, which takes place on June 21. The Summer Solstice is the longest day of the year for the Northern Hemisphere when we'll have almost 15 hours of sunlight in Denver.
The Winter Solstice, meanwhile, is the Northern Hemisphere's shortest day of the year, with only a little over nine hours of sunlight in Denver.
In the meantime, we'll enjoy our first 6 p.m. or later sunset of the year on March 9, and our first 7 p.m. sunset is only three days later thanks to the start of Daylight Saving Time.
This is all, of course, the product of the Earth's tilt. The Earth is tilted at a 23.5-degree angle, which creates our seasons. The Earth is actually closest to the sun in early January (known as Perihelion), but the sun's rays are tilted towards the Northern Hemisphere during our summers.
So in just a few short weeks, our evenings are going to look noticeably different – and noticeably brighter.
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