Summer Solstice

Happy Summer Solstice!  

I didn’t realize how much further north Dublin is from Washington D.C. until we were here for a bit and got closer to the Winter Solstice.  Now that we are on day of the Summer Solstice, it is very evident, as the further from the equator you get, the bigger the swings in daylight length become through the year.

On the shortest day of the year, the Winter Solstice (in this example, the times were pulled from December 21, 2014), this is how the day lengths compare:

     Washington DC:                                   Dublin:

Sunrise:                07:23                                                     08:38

Sunset:                 16:49                                                     16:08

Day length:          9 hours 26 minutes                                7 hours 30 min

Days sure felt short in winter when we lived in DC, but now it’s even worse, less than 1/3 of the day is daylight!

On the longest day of the year, the Summer Solstice, (in this example, the times were pulled from June 21, 2015), this is how the day lengths compare:

     Washington DC:                                   Dublin:

Sunrise:                05:53                                                     04:57

Sunset:                 20:37                                                     21:57

Day length:          14 hours 54 minutes                             17 hours even (only 7 hours of night!)

If you aren’t good at reading military time, that’s sunset at almost 10pm here!  That being said, we were out late last night, and still saw some light in the sky at almost midnight.  Just because these are the official sunrise and sunset times, doesn’t mean it’s completely dark before or after those times.  Just ask Molly Dog, who likes to stick her head between the curtains at around 4:30am and let a super bright ray of light come in to wake hubby and I up.

I love the long sunny days in the summer, but it sure does mess with our sleep schedule.  Sometimes we have to drag ourselves to bed when the sky hasn’t even started turning pink with sunset yet, it feels unnatural!  Even though our curtains are pretty good, I would be really hurting right now if I didn’t have an eye mask to sleep in.  Also, I want to go to sleep at 7pm in the winter.

While we didn’t notice the change in daylight as much in the fall, it seemed really drastic in the spring.  The difference between the longest and shortest day of the year in Washington DC is 5 hours and 28 minutes, but in Dublin it’s 11 hours and 30 minutes!!!!!!!!!!    That’s more than double the difference, no wonder it felt so drastic.  

I know this sounds like complaining, but really I just think it's interesting.  Now I'm going to go enjoy my nice long day :)