The Sun

[aderam]

Every now and then it really gets to me how much further North I'm living than I ever have before. I'm still pretty damn close to the US boarder, but when I lived in Ontario I was well below the 49th (if I remember correctly from the charts and things when sailing we were around the 44th or 45th), and I think that Halifax was even further South, although not by a whole lot.

When I was in Undergrad I sailed from Halifax to Kingston one summer, going up around the outer bit of Cape Breton and through the Gulf into the St. Lawrence River. The sun set on my watch throughout that trip and every day as we got further north into the Gulf you could see it setting later and later. And then it did the opposite once we started heading south again up the river. That was so cool.

The Northyness (technical term) of Vancouver is really noticeable with the sun and all. In the Winter around the Solstice the sun would set shortly after four, and depending on how overcast it was that day sometimes it would start to get dark around 3:30 or earlier. Now that we're heading towards the Summer Solstice the days are getting really long. It's 9:15 and the sun is only just starting to set. It feels like at least an hour different from what I remember in Ontario and Nova Scotia - probably more.

I remember last year I went down to Wreck Beach with a bunch of the Greenies and built sandcastles while avoiding the awkward naked people (for the record, it's a nudist beach, and I have no problems with the naked people, just the creepy ones - and it's always the creepy ones who decide to talk to you). When the sun started to set we just started yelling at it until it was all the way down. It was almost 10pm at that point.

I like it.

It's really cool to be able to see so clearly the movement of our tiny planet around the sun. Especially since the change in the weather isn't so much to show off the change in seasons here in Vancouver.

But it's also weird. I was thinking about curling up in bed and reading until I was ready to sleep. 9pm is in no way too early for that to be a reasonable choice - but it just seems odd when I could still see the sunlight from my dark basement window.

:)

When does the sun go down where you are these days?

Comments

[hobbitbabe]

I keep forgetting to eat supper, because when the light starts to change I'm thinking, oh hm, time to put the barbecue on and it turns out to be something like 8:30pm. Sunset tonight is a bit after 10 pm here.

For some reason my brother G's kids are really interested in the idea of the long days up here, and last year I was under instructions to keep texting them with reports as it got dark on the solstice night. I keep saying that they need to come see for themselves ...

[aderam]

I think it would be even worse(?) if I weren't in a (relatively) dark basement, especially since I'm not in the habit of drawing the curtains or what-have-you.

For some reason... Because it's cool! You can see that the world is tilted! And the sun is in a different place in the sky! It's not just something the (terrible) science textbooks tell you in school! They should come and visit. :)

[denisia]

Our sunset is about 8 at night. It's earlier than NYC was by almost an hour. However, we make up for it by having a later sunset in the winter, and that is a decent tradeoff, IMHO--every extra hour of sunlight helps when the days are short. :)