It’s June 21, and that means today is officially the longest day of the year in the Northern hemisphere. The sun rose at 5:05 a.m. in Montreal, and won’t set until 8:46 p.m., meaning we’ll have gotten a whopping 15 hours and 41 minutes of total daylight by the time the sun sets tonight.
And it’s not just any daylight… It’s a GLORIOUS day for summer solstice! There’s not a cloud in sight in downtown Montreal.
Because we KNOW you’re going to want to celebrate the solstice with a nice barbecue, we cooked up a few fun facts about the solstice that you can impress your friends and embarrass your kids with.
Next year’s solstice will be longer…
Did you know that each year, the Earth spins a tiiiny bit slower? Researchers from the Australian National University in Canberra found that the Earth’s rotation around its axis slows by about 1.78 milliseconds each century due to the Moon’s gravitational pull. That’s not much, but if you were to time-travel back to when dinosaurs existed, days would have been less than 20 hours long!
That means that next year, and every year afterwards, each day will be a tiny bit longer! You won’t notice the difference, but it’s there!
The North Pole gets 24 hours of daylight!
Can you imagine hos disorienting it would be to live above the Arctic Circle? For a short period each year, it gets unending daylight. Similarly, during winter, there is a short window when the North Pole doesn’t see the Sun at all!
Right now, the South Pole is plunged in darkness and frigid temperatures…
Stonehenge
Many believe that Stonehenge, in Wiltshire, England, was built to celebrate the Solstices. Both summer and winter solstices align perfectly with the Heel Stone if you stand in just the right place. Each year, hundreds gather before dawn to witness this mysterious union of nature and monumental architecture.
Soltice is NOT the latest sunset…
Even though June 21 is the longest day of the year, it doesn’t have the latest sunset, at least not in Montreal! According to timeanddate.com, the latest sunset of the year in Montreal actually comes between June 24 and June 28, days when the sun sets two minutes later than Solstice, at 8:47 p.m. Those days are still shorter, though, because sunrise is slightly later.
So, happy summer solstice to all, and don’t forget to break out a few of these facts to your dinner guests or to your family tonight!