The earliest and latest sunrises and sunsets don’t coincide with the solstices -- here's why.
So that explains why the peak sunrise and sunset times are offset from the solstices, but how does Seattle, which sees a sunset around 4:17 p.m. in early December, get its last crack of dusk some 34 minutes after Caribou, where the sun is down by 3:43 p.m. despite being farther south on the map where winter days are longer?
Blame the way we set up time zones and how it leaves some towns misaligned with the sun. There are 24 hours in a day and 360 degrees of longitude around our spherical planet, so each time zone is set at roughly 15-degree longitude intervals as you circle the globe.To have our clocks best match the solar positions, you'd want to be as close to those 15-degree longitude lines as possible.
Caribou is quite offset, sitting at 68 degrees west – just a few miles from Canadian towns in the Atlantic time zone that would be an hour ahead. So those living just a short drive away to the east in New Brunswick, Canada, don't see the sun dip below the horizon until around 4:43 p.m. If we wanted Caribou's clocks to be more accurate to the sun's position, they should be in a time zone that is about 30 minutes ahead of Eastern Standard Time. Then, dusk would set in at 4:13 p.m.
That means despite the earlier sunset, Caribou does have about 6 minutes more daylight than Seattle in December, and all is right with the sunlit planetary world. (For more maps and charts that show the differences between sunrise and sunset times across the continent,
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