The days are still getting shorter, albeit by smaller increments now, but we have some good news for Chicago area residents in coming days.
According to TimeandDate.com, the Chicago area is experiencing some of its shortest days of the year, with a total of nine hours and 13 minutes of daylight on Saturday.
That number will continue to diminish through the winter solstice, when the city will get roughly nine hours, seven minutes and 44 seconds of daylight, according to the website.
Even still, there is some good news on the horizon, pun intended.
Currently, sunset in the city of Chicago is occurring around 4:19 p.m., which is the earliest that the sun will set all year, and soon, that trend will begin to reverse.
While days will still be getting shorter because of later sunrises, the sunset will occur at approximately 4:20 p.m. on Friday, meaning that sunset will begin to occur later and later through the month of June in 2024.
Civil twilight will also start to occur later beginning on Tuesday, meaning that the sky will slowly retain its light for longer periods of time at the end of the day.
After the winter solstice on Dec. 21, the Chicago area will slowly but surely gain daylight, in increments of mere seconds. In fact, we’ll only have one second more daylight on Dec. 22, and by the end of December, Chicago will have only gained a whopping three minutes of daylight.
The beginning of January will see Chicago observing its latest sunrises of the year at 7:18 a.m., but days will continue getting longer, with sunset occurring after 5 p.m. on Jan. 28. By the end of January, the Chicago area will be seeing nearly 10 hours of daylight as we march toward the beginning of spring.
As if that isn’t good enough news, it appears that the entire state of Illinois is expected to see “above-average temperatures” for at least the next month, according to the Climate Prediction Center.
