daylight

[plainfred]

Eastern caribbean, feb. 7-14--- how long is there daylight (i.e. same as east coast, lighter later, or what)?

[plainfred]

Eastern caribbean, feb. 7-14--- how long is there daylight (i.e. same as east coast, lighter later, or what)?

[Karen Knowlton]

The eastern Caribbean should be one hour later (time-wise) than the east coast. However, the amount of sunlight in the winter months is determined by how far south you are, not how far east. The closer to the equator you get, the more likely you are to have close to 12 hours of daylight each day.

[beachbuzzard]

Excellent response Karen, and right on the money!! Yes, closer to the equator = closer to 12 hours of daylight.

Interestingly, that will work AGAINST us on our very first cruise this Summer. We will sail out of NYC on August 27, where the days will probably be about 13-14 hours long at that time here in the NY Metro area. As we travel south on Voyager, the days will shorten down to about 12 hours in the Caribbean.

A great website to help visualize this is www.time.gov . It shows a flat picture of the earth and is lighter where it's currently daylight. On this map you can see that along the equator, the light/dark is exactly 50/50. Currently in the winter, the southern hemisphere's days are longer and in the northern hemisphere's nights are longer. In the summer it's the opposite. If you were to go to this website on the first day of spring or first day of fall, you'd see that the entire planet has 12 hours of light and 12 hours of dark... the light/dark boundries are vertical.

Someday I'd like to go to Norway or Iceland or somewhere like that (far north) around the first day of summer and see what it's like to have nearly 24 hours of daylight. That has to be great!! But you'll never find me there around the first day of winter, when the sun almost doesn't rise. Ick!!!

[Karen Knowlton]

I'm with you there! That's why, though I love Alaska, I wouldn't want to live there. I don't think I could deal with 3- or 4-hour days!!