i just clued in that the distance one lives from their timezone split can have a huge difference on the way the sun is experienced. i suppose that this is obvious, but i never realized it before.

the sun wasn't up until almost 8:00 today. sure, it's the shortest day of the year, but that's still pushing it. it wasn't up until around 8:00 before they turned the clocks back, too. in ottawa, the sun is never much later than 7:30. most confusing to me was that i'm comfortable in the knowledge that windsor is south of ottawa, meaning it's closer to the equator, meaning i would think it should be a few seconds (maybe a minute or two) *earlier*, not apparently a half hour later. it seemed late in the fall, too. i'm used to the sun being up before 7:00 most of the year, and it really wasn't. so, what, precisely, is the fuck?

well, it's pretty obvious if you look at the map. it's not that the sunrise is later here, it's that synchronizing clocks across timezones is something that sort of doesn't actually make sense. here's where it gets weird, and we're moving from east to west across the eastern time-zone here, within a relatively small latitude change:

boston - 7:11
nyc - 7:17
montreal - 7:32
ottawa - 7:40
toronto - 7:48
detroit - 7:59
indianapolis - 8:03

then...

chicago - 7:15

right. time zone shift.

as is now obvious, it's the move east-west that makes the difference. humans may possibly exist at infinitely many points within each time zone, producing a different experience of the sun in each that varies by as much as an hour on the edges. the difference between living in detroit and living in chicago could be dramatic for some people. what i've done is move a half hour within the zone, and it's produced noticeable effects.

there's a benefit, though, if you're the type that is inclined that way, especially in the summer:

sunset in ottawa today - 4:23
sunset in windsor today - 5:03

so, the thing to adjust to is the sun coming up a half hour later and setting a half hour later.

mom
i was wondering why the sun wasn't coming up when we drove in.

jessica amber murray
well, it was freaking you out. i just thought it was cloudy. it wasn't until around october that i realized something wasn't right.

mom
the summer days were always a lot longer in prince rupert, so i thought the days got longer when you moved north and shorter as you get closer to the equator. so, shouldn't the days in windsor be shorter?

jessica amber murray
that's a big latitude difference, though. almost 10 degrees. and the shift isn't linear - it changes faster as you move further north. so, you'd expect to notice a measurable change with longer days in the summer and shorter days in the winter. ottawa to windsor is only 3 degrees. i mean, i'm sure you could measure it down to a few minutes, but it couldn't really be that noticeable.

actually, sunrise in binghampton, new york was about 11 minutes earlier than sunrise in ottawa, today. so that's the straight comparison, north-south. at the solstice.

really, the longitude thing is totally obvious when you think about it. of course the sun does rise later over windsor than over ottawa if measured from outer space (my language up there was a bit weird). i'm just a half hour further away from the earth coming out of darkness. the thing is we tend to expect that time zones work that kind of shit out and don't think about the changes that exist when moving across the same time zone.

also, the fact that we were moving west overnight might have exaggerated the effect. we got to experience the earlier sunset in ottawa, then the later sunrise on the way into windsor.

something i've learned though is that if you like an early sunset (and i'm often up all night, and do like to watch the sun rise) then you want to be on the easternmost edge of your timezone. relative to your clock, the sun rises earlier in chicago than in detroit (although it of course passes over detroit first). somewhere like the gaspe peninsula would be perfect for those that like early sunrises..