Daylight Savings Day.
Nature is making the evenings longer all by itself.
I will describe day lengths in Medford, Oregon.
We are just above the 42 degrees north latitude. We are on about the same parallel as Chicago (42), Boston (42), New York City (41),Toronto (43), French Riviera (42), Tuscany (43), Beijing (40). All places along this latitude experience about the same length of day, although the climates are very different.
Summer days at this latitude are 6 hours and 12 minutes longer on the summer solstice than they are at the winter solstice. There are 15 hours, 20 minutes of daylight on June 21 versus only 9 hours and 8 minutes on December 21. That means that over that 182 days there is a gain or loss of 372 minutes-- an average of 2 minutes and 4 seconds a day.
What may not be intuitive is that this gain or loss does not take place evenly over that period. The month of March begins with a day length of 11 hours, 18 minutes. March ends with a day of 12 hours, 44 minutes, a gain of 96 minutes in 31 days. That is 3 minutes and 10 seconds a day--a very noticeable difference, especially coming at dinnertime or in an evening commute.
People may have a sense that all of December is unchanging in its darkness, or that early summer is endless in its long, long evenings. That is not an illusion. In the 30 days leading up to the December solstice the days are short and stay short, with little change in the length of day. On November 21 the day is 9 hours, 38 minutes. On December 21 it is 9 hours, 8 minutes, a change of only 40 seconds a day. The period where the day length is in the 9-hour range goes from November 10 through January 31, which is 82 straight days of early darkness. A similar period of little-changing daylight happens in the summer, with its two-plus months of 15-hour days.
What we experience is a long period of unchanging days at the solstices, and then a period of rapid changes around the equinoxes. It isn't your imagination and the the longer evenings are not just from switching the clocks. The days really are getting noticeably longer, and it is happening right now.
I never knew all that. Thanks for explaining.
Peter, this long verbal explanation is easy to see and i think easier to understand with the sign wave curve of day lengths. Steep part of the curve day/night length changing rapidly rounded or flatter part of the curve less rapid change.