Winter Solstice

The winter solstice occurred at 3:42 a.m. today. This means that winter officially starts, but more importantly, the days start getting longer. Official sunrise this morning was at 10:14 a.m. and sunset was at 3:41 p.m. If skies are clear, there is usually 1+ hour of usable daylight on either side of those, but there's no doubt that the daylight hours are short. In just a couple of months, though, we will have a lot more daylight. Alaskans celebrate this day in a variety of ways, usually involving alcohol and firearms. Of course, Alaskans celebrate most things with alcohol and firearms, so it's kind of hard to tell just what we're celebrating. But we are glad that the daylight will start increasing for the next six months.