I Can't Believe How Early It Gets Light In London

[SoCalMusicLover]

They're showing live coverage, it's a little past 4:30 AM, and it's already completely light out.

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

1. London is pretty far north - about the same as Calgary, Canada.

So they get more daylight in the summer than we do in the lower 48.

[riverbendviewgal]

2. Sunrise is 4:47

I live in northern ontarto. Sunrise is 5:24. So daylight starts about an hour before sunrise. When I lived in Florida Keys it was not that early and the sun set real fast as opposed to the northern slow sunsets.

[roamer65]

3. The night won't be very dark there either in the late spring/early summer.

Sol is only a very few degrees below the northern horizon.

[HipChick]

5. It didn't get dark till 9pm or 10pm

when I was there last, and I forget and it freaked me out..

[roamer65]

7. Astronomers call it the solstice glow.

It makes for crappy viewing this time of year. Yup the nights are very short in June and almost non-existent at 50 degree N latitudes.

I hate how early it gets light even at 42 deg N.

[Spider Jerusalem]

4. there's light visible over the horizon at this latitude by around 3:45am

and it's light enough to see by around 4:30am or so (51 degrees north, 18-19 hours of daylight at the solstice, give or take; it doesn't get full dark until around 10:30pm).

[JI7]

6. and there is light still at like 10pm or some late hour from what i remember when i was there

it was similar in canada when it was totally sunny and bright at some early hour.

but these all happened during the summer.

[applegrove]

8. I had a summer job at about the same latitude in Lake Louise Alberta.

It got dark at about 11PM most nights in the summer. Don't know how early the sun rose as we slept in being at the end of a 2 hour hike. We got no customers until 10AM. It was great. We'd have long dinners in the light.

[Grammy23]

9. The brightness of the sun at 10:30 p.m. in Fairbanks, Alaska

Blew our minds when we visited in 2011. I had trouble sleeping with a time shift and looked out our window at 3:30 a.m. Which would have been pitch black dark at home. It was a little dim but the parking lot was clearly visible. Luckily our hotel had blackout curtains that helped but it really messes with your mind to look out on the street at 12:30 a.m. and still see plenty of sunlight!

[roamer65]

10. Imagine above the Arctic Circle.

Sol never goes away this time of year.

[moondust]

11. Was camping near Oslo at summer solstice

in 1975. It never did get completely dark.

[malaise]

19. I've been in Denmark in June

It was dark for about three hours. On the other hand their winters are awful in terms of dark.

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

12. Anchorage, AK in June is pretty weird, too.

Sunset is around 11:40 and sunrise is about 4:20, but it never really gets dark. If you're not used to it you try to go to bed at a normal hour but it's still light so you get up and wander around outside, looking for something to do. It's strange.

[Spider Jerusalem]

13. That happens in the Scottish Highlands, too.

That's what the Robert Burns poem "Roaming in the Gloaming" is about ("gloaming" is the twilight that lasts all night at that latitude in summer).

[dixiegrrrrl]

20. Thank you for that info...

I love learning new words, or in this case, the meaning of words known.

[gratuitous]

14. 51.5 degrees north latitude

So, yeah, the days get real long around the summer solstice. And it's wicked dark in the winter.

[OnDoutside]

15. In the height​of summer it's like daytime at 10pm on the

West coast of Ireland. I've been, in the past, sitting outside at a bar in Sweden at 4.30am, and it's barely dusk.

[pnwmom]

16. Long days in the summer. It's the opposite in the winter. nt

[SoCalNative]

17. It's the same here in Amsterdam

First light starts just after 4AM and last bit of light disappears from the sky between 10:30/11PM.

Of course, in the winter it's a different story. Won't get light until around 9AM and completely dark by 4PM.

[DFW]

18. Few Americans realize how far north Europe is

We southerners tend to consider Boston as being to the north, but it is on the same latitude as Barcelona, Spain, which is far to the south for most Europeans. Up here in the German Rheinland, about the same latitude as Amsterdam, we are used to June's early mornings and daylight not disappearing until 10 PM. Two hours flight north of here, in Sweden it is even more extreme. I have been in Kiruna in late June, when the sun didn't set at all. I have also been in Norway in the winter, when there was only about 4 or 5 hours of daylight. They call that "mørketiden," or "the dark time," and it is when most of the famous Scandinavian suicides happen. Even here in Germany, well to the south of central Norway, the long dark periods of the winter days are depressing.

[dembotoz]

21. Another reason Europe has a vested interest in climate change

If the northern flow of ocean currents changes they could b really screwed