Summer solstice in Seattle: Occurs at 3:51am Saturday morning. This is when the sun is directly over the Tropic of Cancer and when the sun reaches its highest point in the sky in the northern hemisphere. It’ll also be our “longest day” with 15 hours, 59 minutes and 20 seconds of daylight Saturday (up one second from today) with the sun reaching a maximum elevation in our sky of 65.8°. (The horizon is zero and directly overhead is 90°, so we’re talking about the sun being just a hair shy of two-thirds of the way up in the sky at solar noon which will occur at 1:11 p.m. If you want to mark a moment when the sun is just as strong as it can be at any time of year, 1:11 p.m. Saturday is it!) By comparison, the “shortest day” of the year with just 8:25:24 of daylight? The first day of winter, December 21. On that date, the maximum sun angle is just 19.0° above the horizon.
Posted on: Fri, 20 Jun 2014 19:03:27 +0000