It’s the shortest day of the year in Cape Town (and elsewhere in the global south too, obvs).
That means sunrise at 0751, sunset at 1744 and just 9 hours, 53 minutes and 31 seconds of daylight today. That’s 1 second shorter than yesterday, and 0.65 seconds shorter than tomorrow. It might not seem like much, because it’s not, but these things do get measured and those are the numbers.
Make plans now. Don’t waste your 0.65 extra seconds of daylight tomorrow.
Of course, that means that it’s also the longest day in the Northern hemisphere, and from tomorrow, the nights will be closing in as they head inexorably towards winter.
This year, this fact is actually rather annoying, given that we’re heading up to the top half of the world very shortly. But still, because we’re staying (generally) to the west side of their time zone, and because we’re staying (exclusively) a lot further north than Cape Town is south, we’re still going to have some lovely late evenings.
In fact, sunset on our second night in Ireland will only be at 9:58pm. Sunset has never been anywhere near that late in Cape Town.
It’s been a long, hard winter so far, and we’re not out of the woods just yet.
But hey, South Africa: summer is just around the corner.