Daylight increasing quickly as WA inches toward spring. Here’s how much to expect
Just when it seemed like it was getting lighter every morning in Washington state, Daylight Saving Time pushed the clocks forward an hour over the weekend, bringing darkness back to our daybreak routines.
However that means that now sunlight is sticking around an hour later in the day, giving people more time to enjoy the outdoors after a long day of work.
On an even better note, we’re gaining more minutes of sunlight every day. The spring equinox is on March 20, signaling the start of astronomical spring and the day when the sun rises and sets directly along the equator.
As the sun appears to rise from south of the equator to north of it in the Northern Hemisphere throughout March, we begin to see more daylight as we inch closer to summer.
March is the month with the most drastic increase in daylight, according to Jay Breidenbach with the National Weather Service.
But just how fast are we gaining sunlight?
March: The most dramatic month of spring
March experiences the fastest increase in daylight of any month as we approach and move past the spring equinox on March 20.
As the sun appears to cross the equator northward, it rises slightly more quickly in the morning and takes slightly longer to set each day as the axial tilt points the Northern Hemisphere toward the sun’s rays.
“The Earth’s axis is always pointed in the same direction,” Breidenbach says. “But as it goes around the sun, the hemisphere facing the sun is in summer, and the one pointed away is in wintertime.”
The transition is fastest during March because about 10 days before and after the equinox, the tilt causes the sunlight that hits a region to increase more rapidly than in the middle of summer or dead of winter. The sun is positioned at either extreme of the spectrum during the summer and winter solstices, when the days are either longest or shortest, respectively, and therefore the change in daylight isn’t as drastic.
How much daylight do we gain per day?
By the end of the month, the sun will rise at the same time in the morning as it did at the beginning of the month, but it will set at a much later time in comparison.
On March 1 in Tacoma, the sun rose at 6:50 a.m. and set at 5:54 p.m. for 11 hours and 4 minutes of daylight. On March 31, the sun will rise at the same time as the beginning of the month, 6:50 a.m., but will set much later at 7:37 p.m., totaling almost 12 hours and 47 minutes of daylight — a 103-minute difference in just one month.
On average, Tacoma gains about 3 minutes and 25 seconds of daylight on a daily basis in March. In June, when the summer solstice occurs, the difference in daylight from the start of the month to the end is approximately 13 minutes.
The dramatic increase in daylight coincides with a quick increase in temperature, Breidenbach said.
“Typically, there’s a little bit of a seasonal lag,” Breidenbach explains, noting that April will see a more significant temperature increase than March. The average high temperature for Seattle — the closest city to Tacoma that has data available at NWS — at the start of April 2022 was 57 degrees and rose to 63 degrees by the end of the month.
The same phenomenon regarding daylight and temperature can be flipped for October each year, shortly after the autumnal equinox: The days get shorter more quickly, and the temperature decreases most dramatically during October.
This story was originally published March 14, 2023 at 5:00 AM with the headline "Daylight increasing quickly as WA inches toward spring. Here’s how much to expect."
