It depends on where you live in your respective time zones, but in my case here in Lincoln, we have gained one minute of sun light in the evening. The morning sun tho is a scrooge, it doesnt start comming up earlier until the middle of Jan.

As a hater of winter weather I take that one minute of more sun in the evening as a harbinger of what will be a long time in comming. Gads I hate winter!!!!!

How exactly is this possible as we are not yet past the winter solstice. I thought every day got shorter, in the northern hemisphere until 12/21 'ish.

EDIT: But I went and looked it up and you are correct, you gain 2 minutes of time at sunset but lose 4 minutes in the morning, between now and 12/21.

I'm curious as to the reason.

Daylight Savings, as with all savings programs administered by government or large banks and corporations is illusory, with small charges and fees, diminishing any true gains. These small micro-liens are cleverly hidden. Like "cash-back programs" and "rewards" programs there is no free lunch and the "house" always wins in the end. Over the last century the international time-keeping cabal has filched on the average 6.33 years of daylight from each man, woman and child that has lived, and they are keeping it hidden in a cave masquerading as a diamond mine in South Africa.

A tilted axis.

And you aren't quite right about the gain and loss. This is a graph of the sunrise/sunset times around the winter solstice for Denver (it's different depending on your latitude and you can find the tables for anywhere in the world at the US Naval Observatory website



The earliest sunset for Denver (and anyone along the 40th parallel) occurred on December 5th. If you look at the raw data, the sun sets at 1635 for 6 days until 12/11. Then it sets at 1636 and stays there for 5 days, then at 1637 for 3 days and so on.

Sunrise, on the other hand doesn't hit its latest sunrise (0722) until 1/5. It does stay at the same time (0721) for 7 days before 1/5 and then goes back to 0721 for another 7 days. December 21 just happens to be the day that is has the least amount of sun light where it falls between the two curves.

The summer solstice is similar but the curve maximums are closer together.

The bad news, however, is that we have another month of dark mornings.

The location of your town in your time zone skews the sun rise and sunset off Dec 21

The times are a little different but the trend is the same for similar latitudes. The values are also theoretical, i.e. calculated. Denver's sunset is several minutes before the USNO "sunset". Having 14,000 foot mountains 20 to 40 miles to the west blocks the sun more than in Lincoln.

My previous answer was a bit to glib. The tilt to our axis as well as our elliptical orbit around the sun and some tricky celestial mechanics are the reason for what I detailed above. The guys at Cornell have an explanation that takes a couple of readings to understand

time zones are an approximation. they don't provide infinite granularity. and as mentioned, celestial mechanics are not as an exact science.