Can You Make Winter Less Dark?
If you live in the Northern Hemisphere, there’s a decent chance that it’s dark outside as you’re reading this. Bleak midwinter, indeed. The darkest part of the year is preceded by the switch to standard time, which sacrifices the evening sun in favor of earlier dawns. The results can feel dismally dim.
That — plus the fact that the majority of Americans dislike changing clocks, to begin with — has led to efforts to eliminate standard time … and counterefforts to eliminate daylight saving time. Can either option squeeze more day out of the light we do have? Try your hand at optimizing daylight all year long:
Sunrise and sunset times were calculated for 2022, based on the geographic center of each county. Sunrise is defined as when the top edge of the sun appears on the horizon; sunset is defined as when the sun disappears below the horizon and evening civil twilight (when the sun's geometric center is 6 degrees below the horizon) starts. Since Arizona does not observe daylight saving time and the Navajo Nation does, the portion of the Navajo Nation within Arizona was considered its own “county”; the Navajo Nation was then carved out of any Arizona county it intersects with. Sunrise and sunset times in counties that cross multiple time zones were calculated separately for each county’s area within each time zone. For counties with at least one day when the sun does not rise or set, the earliest sunrise or latest sunset times are marked as “N/A.”
Unfortunately, no solution will make every American happy. Even if you’ve found a combination that satisfies your personal preferences, you may have noticed that those preferences could negatively impact other parts of the country. And advocates for changing the system we currently have — whether for or against DST — feel strongly that their personal preference is the best.
