Growing up in Sweden, I learned early on to attach safety reflectors to my winter jackets and school bags. However, during spring and summer, no-one wears reflectors and shops don’t stock them. Who needs reflectors when dusk turns into dawn and the sun is up again after about 6 hours? Even in southern Sweden, it wasn’t until August that the nights turned pitch black so that I could not find my way home from the parties without bike lights. I have to point out though, that it is safer to use bike lights and safety reflectors in the twilight hours too so you don’t get hit.
Years later, when I lived in Geneva, Switzerland, friends visited mid June with a suitcase full of pickled herring, small fresh potatoes, snaps/aquavit and other must-haves for a Swedish Midsummer celebration. The warm summer night was perfect for a backyard party. However, by the time we got to the strawberry dessert we realized something was very wrong. Everything tasted right, but something felt wrong. It was too dark! It was pitch black. An evening that slowly, slowly changing into morning without a dark night in-between turned out to be as important as herring and strawberries for that “real” Swedish midsummer feel. And, yes, some of the local guests who came by bike needed their bike lights to find their way home afterwards. If it had been today, I would have given them some safety reflectors too!
The Longest Evening is Not at Summer Solstice!
No matter where in the Northern hemisphere you live, now is the time to enjoy the longest and brightest summer evenings! In a couple of days, we will start losing minutes of evening light. By August, an entire hour of evening light will be gone. We intended to write about sunset on the day of summer solstice, this year June 21st. However, when we looked up sunset times on the website TimeAndDate, we noticed something odd. June 21st is the longest day of the year, but the latest sunset is actually a couple days later in most places and the earliest sunrise a few days earlier. This quirk arises from a combination of the earth moving around the sun in an elliptical orbit and the earth’s axis of rotation being tilted 23.5 degrees. If you are curious on exactly why, the Washington Post explains this rather complex phenomenon in this article.
Latest Sunset in Some Major North American cities:
So, to all night owls out there: many of you still have the longest evening to look forward to! On the map and table below, we show the latest sunset time of the year for some major North American cities. As expected, northern cities have longer nights, but sunset time also depends on if your are to the west or to the east in your time zone. Of course, the length of the day stays the same along a line of latitude, so a late sunset is compensated with late sunrise. In most of the US, the sun sets between 8 pm and 9 pm and in the southern parts of Canada about half an hour later. Due to it’s northern location, Anchorage is an outlier with sunset at 11:42. Like in the Northern parts of Scandinavia, Alaska and Canada see midnight sun north of the arctic circle.
| City, State/Prov. | Sunset June 21, 2019 (pm) | Latest Sunset (pm) | Period of latest sunset |
| Anchorage, AK | 11:42 | 11:42 | 6/21 – 6/24 |
| Atlanta, GA | 8.51 | 8:52 | 6/26 – 7/3 |
| Boston, MA | 8:24 | 8:25 | 6/25 – 6/29 |
| Chicago, IL | 8:29 | 8:29 | 6/22 – 7/3 |
| Dallas, TX | 8:38 | 8:39 | 6/26 – 7/4 |
| Denver, CO | 8:31 | 8:32 | 6/26 – 6/29 |
| Honolulu, HI | 7:16 | 7:17 | 6/26 – 7/12 |
| Los Angeles, CA | 8:07 | 8:08 | 6/24 – 7/4 |
| Miami, FL | 8:15 | 8:16 | 6/27 – 7/7 |
| Minneapolis, MN | 9:03 | 9:03 | 6/20 – 7/2 |
| New Orleans, LA | 8:04 | 8:05 | 6/26 – 7/5 |
| New York, NY | 8:30 | 8:31 | 6/24 – 7/1 |
| Phoenix, AZ | 7:41 | 7:42 | 6/27 – 7/2 |
| Portland, OR | 9:03 | 9:03 | 6/21 – 7/1 |
| Salt Lake City, UT | 9:02 | 9:02 | 6/20 – 7/4 |
| San Francisco, CA | 8:34 | 8:35 | 6/22 – 7/4 |
| St. Louis, MO | 8:28 | 8:29 | 6/24 – 7/2 |
| Washington, DC | 8:36 | 8:37 | 6/22 – 6/23 |
| Calgary, AB | 9:54 | 9:55 | 6/24 – 6/26 |
| Montreal, QC | 8:46 | 8:47 | 6/24 – 6/28 |
| Toronto, ON | 9:02 | 9:03 | 6/24 – 6/29 |
| Vancouver, BC | 9:21 | 9:22 | 6/23 – 6/28 |
Before we know it, the days will be shorter again and the funflector team is already gearing up for another busy season for safety reflectors!
Enjoy the sunlight!
Elisabeth