The Sun Also Rises . . . Later

A common complaint this time of year is how early the sun sets now that clocks have fallen back an hour. People usually make some comment like, "Boo hoo, it's so depressing" or some such thing.

The other day I carped about how late the sun will rise on November 6, 2010, thanks to the Energy Policy Act of 2005. Well, this historic day has arrived — depending where you are, and in most places it seems, this is the latest the sun will rise all year (notable exceptions to follow). (And I say "historic," but this great piece on the National Geographic website notes that the United States observed Daylight Saving Time year round during WWII, which must have been weird.)

The other day I also took the liberty of agonizing on behalf of school bus-riding children who had to walk to their stops in the dark, and noted that in New York City, the sun would rise at 7:31 a.m. But looking at a time zone map, and using the Google along with Steve Edwards' excellent SunriseSunset.com (who is this Steve Edwards guy? I kind of want to interview him under the rubric of people who heroically devote a great deal of time to making the Internet awesome for what appears to be no recompense*), I found some of the more extreme examples of how late today's sunrise is across the United States. In Forks, Washington (yes, that Forks), for example — which is one of the more western and northern municipalities in the Pacific Time Zone — the sun rose today at 8:09 a.m.

But Forks has nothing on some other places.

In Vale, Oregon — 600-some-odd miles to the southeast of Forks — the sun rose today at 8:31 a.m. Vale is of the more westerly located municipalities in the Mountain Time Zone, since Oregon's Malheur County is the only county in Oregon that is in the Mountain Time Zone. (McIntosh, South Dakota, also in the Mountain Time Zone, will see the sun rise at 7:31 a.m., a full hour earlier than Vale.)

Ontonagon, Michigan — owing to its location on Michigan's Upper Peninsula, and not being one of the four counties up there in the Central Time Zone — saw the sun rise at 8:46 a.m. Meanwhile, Fortuna, North Dakota saw the sun rise at 8:49 a.m. this morning, Fortuna being one of the most northerly and westerly municipalities in the Central Time Zone.

Then there are the outliers. Adak, Alaska, which is the westernmost municipality in the United States and part of the Hawaii-Aleutian Time Zone, will not see the sun rise until 9:48 a.m. Earlier I noted that, in general, today is the latest the sun will rise all year, but this is actually not the case for Adak, whose latest sunrise will be from December 26 through January 4, when the sun will rise at 9:53 a.m.

But all this pales in comparison to Wales, Alaska, which is the westernmost municipality on mainland Alaska (or in fact mainland North America). Located in the Alaska Time Zone, the sun rose in Wales today at 11:20 a.m. And that's not the worst of it — from December 23rd through the 26th the 152 residents of Wales will not see the sun rise until 12:37 p.m. Holy moly. (Check out these other strange bits of trivia about the Alaska Time Zone — in summer the sun can set in Fairbanks at 12:47 a.m. the next day.)

As loopy as time zones are in the U.S., we have nothing on China, which went from having five time zones to only one time zone after 1949. China does not observe Daylight Saving Time, but you might be interested to know that the sun rose today in Haiqing, basically the easternmost city in China, at 6:25 a.m. Meanwhile, in Atushi (or Artux) way out in Western China (couldn't find sunrise information for Wuqia, which I Wikipediaed was the westernmost point in China), the sun rose around 9:30 a.m. Same time zone. Now that is really weird.

*For example, there is a guy in England named Tony Peart who transcribed guitar tablature for over 100 Hüsker Dü songs — including every chord of the absurdly zany Land Speed Record LP — which is a tremendous undertaking. He had a Geocities site for years until Yahoo! finally got rid of Geocities in 2009. (Yet more heroic folks are busy trying to preserve this part of Internet history.) Peart's work has been preserved here and he provides an introduction for the tabs here — Peart says that it took a minimum of four hours to transcribe each song. That's 400 hours, not including the time it takes to put together and update a website. Like, I said — heroic. One more example and I'll have three . . .