The chill of change is in the air in the Chicago area this week, but cooler temperatures aren’t the only milestones the region is reaching as fall approaches.
The autumnal equinox will arrive at approximately 7:44 a.m. on Sunday, September 22, but the Chicago area will see plenty of daylight-related milestones before and after that date.
While most residents would assume that the city will see roughly 12 hours of daylight and 12 hours of night on the autumnal equinox, that’s not quite true. In fact, the first day with fewer than 12 hours of daylight doesn’t occur until three days later on September 25, according to TimeandDate.
For daylight lovers, it will take almost six months to get back to 12 hours of sunlight, with that date being March 17, 2025.
Another important milestone in the march towards autumn will occur on Sunday, September 15. On that date, the sun will set before 7pm for the first time since March 16, with sunset at 6:58pm that day.
For the rest of the month, Chicago will lose just under three minutes of daylight per day, with sunset just after 6:30 p.m. in late September.
The next milestone will come on October 21, when the city will see the sun dip below the horizon before 6 p.m., at which point we’ll see fewer than 11 hours of daylight each day.
Those cuts will continue unabated until December, when the city will get just over nine hours of daylight. The earliest sunset of the year occurs in early December, with sunset at approximately 4:19 p.m
After the winter solstice, the area will slowly begin to see more daylight, but will only gain a few seconds per day until the end of 2024.