Sunrise, Sunset

So everyone knows the winter solstice is on December 21st. But probably not everyone knows that the earliest sunset and latest sunrise are not on the day of winter solstice. So some details for Minneapolis courtesy of TimeAndDate.com:

Earliest sunset is at 4:31 December 6th through 12th (the website doesn't give the seconds). According to WGN, that day is December 8th for Chicago, with sunset at 4:19:46. I was surprised, that Chicago has an earlier "earliest sunset" than Minneapolis, since they are farther south, but I guess it has more to do with the fact that they are on the eastern side of the Central Time Zone.

Shortest day is December 21st - 8h 45m 56s, 1 second shorter than December 20th, and 3 seconds shorter than December 22nd.

Latest sunrise is 7:51 am December 27th - January 7th.

To round out the summary, let's look at the other end of the spectrum:

Earliest sunrise is at 5:26 June 9-21, 2009.

Longest day - according to Time and Date . com, both June 20 and June 21 2009 come in at 15h 37m 06s. June 19 and June 22 are both 4 seconds longer.

Latest sunset is at 9:04 June 22-30, 2009.

For Karis, I tried to come close to the times for Beloit: shortest day in Madison is 8h 59m 36s, and in Chicago it's 9h 07m 53s. I'd guess Beloit is somewhere in between. Of course, you'll be home on the actual shortest day, but in the meantime, your days are slightly longer than here.

For those in other states, Richmond, VA (closest I could come) has 20 minutes more on the shortest day, but almost an hour less on the the longest (9:34:12 and 14:45:29). Dallas Texas has more than an hour extra on the shortest day and almost an hour and 20 minutes less on the longest day (9:59:26 and 14:18:50).

And now it's time for me to go back to work. I for one am looking forward to a later sunset very soon. The rest of you are probably asleep by now.