Sunsets after Nine

  It's time to celebrate daylight! The Summer Solstice happens at 6:09 pm CDT today (June 20). The direct rays of the sun reach their northern-most point on the earth’s surface today, and the time between sunrise and sunset maxes out. Here in the Twin Cities, we have a whopping 15 hours and 36 minutes of daylight!

   This is a great time of year for outdoor fun. You can sneak in some golf, biking, even some water fun after you get home from work. At Lake Minnetonka on Monday, I noticed a kayaker still paddling along, even though it was 9pm:

                               (Left-click on the photo for detailed view)

    Sunset at MSP airport remains at 9:03 pm for several days, then the sun begins to set earlier as we move through July and into autumn. Here are some sunset times for MSP airport:

June 20: 9:03 pm

July 15: 8:56 pm

August 15: 8:18 pm

September 15: 7:23 pm

  I used a sunrise/sunset table generated at the U.S. Naval Observatory web site (USNO). I plugged in the lat/lon for MSP airport, W 93 degrees, 13 minutes and N 44 degrees, 53 minutes. You can also just put in a city name and state to get a sunrise/sunset table for your location.

  If the sun seems to set later in the evening when you’re up at the cabin, it’s not just your imagination. Plug some northwestern Minnesota city names into the USNO site and you’ll discover June and July sunsets that are 15-25 minutes later than our sunset times here in the Twin Cities. If you really like your daylight, go north of the Arctic Circle…the sun never sets there this time of year!

  I’m on Twitter: @RonTrenda and LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/in/rontrenda