All day long

Some friends will be visiting from North Carolina this weekend, passing through on the way to Minneapolis for Easter. This got me thinking about our recent driving vacations and one of the things I hate about driving south in the summer- the days get shorter!. Most of us realize that far northern areas have times when the sun doesn't set, but sometimes we don't make the logical step that in the summer (for instance at the summer solstice), the further south you go, the shorter the daylight becomes. I found a lovely chart at this website:

The chart is easier to read at the actual site. Sorry about that. You can visit the US Naval Observatory, too. They have a gizmo that will calc sunrise/sunset for you. The point, though is that at Summer Solstice, the day in Minneapolis (~44 deg N) is about 15 hours and 37 minutes, while in Charlotte, NC (35 deg N) the day is only 14 hours and 32 minutes long. More than an hour of additional daylight for the Twin Cities! Yes, that'll show those southern good-for-nothings! (Please ignore the fact that the longer your summer solstice day, the shorter your winter solstice day)

Here's some more cities, with day length at Summer solstice, in case you're interested:

Milwaukee 15:23, Houston 14:04, Key West 13:40, Anchorage 19:22, Seattle 16:00, Honolulu 13:26.

Oh, and to satisfy the sticklers, yes, actual daylight is longer than the difference between sunrise and sunset, as it includes twilight (which also increases and decreases in length along with the "day proper") and that calculated sunset and actual sunset can differ due to bending of light rays by the atmosphere, yada, yada, yada.