The Winter Solstice Is Coming, But What Exactly Is It?

20 Dec 2019, 8:40 am

Winter officially kicks off Saturday at 11:19 EST and of course, at the same time in the Southern Hemisphere, summer will also be initiated. For us here in the Northern Hemisphere, the sun will be on its most southerly track in the sky giving us the shortest day of the year.

From the Winter Solstice on Saturday until the summer solstice on Saturday, June 2, 2020, the nights will progressively grow shorter while the daylight hours will increase.

WINTER IS COMING!? How far away are we from the change of the season? Meteorologist @GarofaloWX has more!

Want the nitty gritty? Click here! -> https://t.co/w1AOG8QOet #WinterSolstice #Winter pic.twitter.com/Mpp1gLGTh8

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One might think that the shorter duration of sunlight on the Winter Solstice should bring about the coldest temperatures as well but the coldest and warmest temperatures typically occur weeks after the winter and summer solstices, respectively.

On the Winter Solstice, the earth’s axis is angled away from the sun with the Northern Hemisphere receiving the shortest duration of sunlight while the southern hemisphere enjoys the longest duration of sunlight of the year.

About the author

Meredith Garofalo

Meredith is a Certified Broadcast Meteorologist as designated by the American Meteorological Society. She was born and raised in Cleveland but has worked from coast to coast covering almost every type of weather. Meredith is a weather, space, and STEM journalist and has been live out in the field during destructive tropical storms on the Gulf Coast of Florida, raging wildfires in Southern Cali... Load Morefornia, and covered the wreckage from tornadoes in the Great Plains. In 2009, she reported on the damaging hail storm during the Sturgis Motorcycle Rally and in 2017, the historic California winter storms that produced record rain totals and devastating flash flooding. Prior to joining WeatherNation, Meredith worked at KEYT/KKFX in Santa Barbara, CA, KOTA-TV in Rapid City, SD, WWSB-TV in Sarasota, FL, and began her career as an intern at WGN-TV in Chicago. She was Santa Barbara's "Favorite Weathercaster of the Year" in 2016 and the Community Partner of the Year in 2017 for her volunteer work with Make-A-Wish Tri-Counties and awarded with the 2018 Valparaiso University Alumni Association First Decade Achievement Award. Meredith is the current chair of the American Meteorological Society's Station Scientist Committee, which focuses on raising greater awareness & outreach when it comes to science education for viewers. She's also an accomplished journalist, producing weather and science stories including rocket launches at Vandenberg Air Force Base and the new GOES-16 satellite and it's impacts on weather forecasting. Meredith was personally invited by NASA's Johnson Space Center to interview astronauts on the International Space Station and was the only meteorologist in the nation to do an exclusive report accompanying the GOES-West satellite from Colorado to Florida, reporting on and covering it's launch in 2018. Meredith's also worked on features that took her paragliding along the coast, white water rafting in Northern California, learning to surf in the Pacific Ocean, and how to be an aerial photographer while flying a single engine plane! Say hi on Facebook, Twitter, & LinkedIn!