ORLANDO, Fla. – “Rise and shine, sleepyheads!”
Did you notice something different early Wednesday morning? The sun officially poked over the horizon in Orlando at 6:59 a.m.
While most didn’t observe the 30-second shift, it does make Wednesday, Feb. 19, the first day of the year when the sun decided to rise before the 7 o’clock hour.
Now, you might be wondering, “Why is this happening?” Well, let me explain.
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Earth spins on a tilted axis, and as it orbits the sun, this tilt causes the length of daylight to change throughout the year. In February, we’re on the upswing, with sunrise times getting earlier and sunsets pushing later. It’s like the Earth’s way of giving us a little more daylight to play with.
This gradual shift in daylight is one of the reasons why we have daylight saving time. Come March 9 at 2 a.m., we’ll be setting our clocks forward an hour to make the most of those longer days.
While some despise the idea of losing an hour of sleep, have you ever thought what our summers would look like if we didn’t slightly shift the clock?
We crunched the numbers and found out.
If we observed standard time all year and not move the clocks in March, a lot of your summer evening activities would fall in darkness. The latest summer sunset would be 7:27 p.m. and the earliest sunrise at 5:27 a.m.
Click here, for a breakdown on saving vs. standard.
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