Winter Solstice: 21 December 2019

Today the sun will pause at 11:19pm Eastern Time and begin to move north again — or so it will seem to us earthbound humans.

The far north will be dark but not inky black everywhere. At Kotzebue, Alaska, 26 miles north of the Arctic Circle, the sun will rise at 12:56pm and set 1 hour and 43 minutes later, similar to the solstice photo above, taken at Bering Land Bridge NP. Kotzebue is the furthest north I’ve ever been though I didn’t get off the plane..

Here in the Lower 48 we’ll have lingering sunsets …

… and the days will get longer tomorrow.

Soon the birds will think about spring for reasons described in this vintage article: In Response To Daylight.

(photos by Bering Land Bridge National Preserve, Kate St. John, and Alan Wolf on Flickr, Creative Commons licenses; click on the captions to see the originals)