Sky Watch
Sunset Is Leaving a Minute Earlier Every Night. We Got Its Schedule.
Tonight's sunset on Anna Maria Island was 7:12. The last 7 o'clock sunset of the year is Saturday, Oct. 17, and by Thanksgiving week it's 5:36. Here's every date worth knowing, straight from the Naval Observatory.
The sun went down over Anna Maria Island tonight at 7:12. Tomorrow it leaves at 7:11. Nobody signed off on this.
It's going to keep doing that, about a minute a night through October and a little slower after, until Thanksgiving week. So I pulled the U.S. Naval Observatory's sunrise and sunset data for Manatee Public Beach in Holmes Beach for the rest of the year. Downtown Bradenton and Sarasota land within about a minute of these. Treat sunset like the standing appointment it is, because it's not waiting for you.
The dates worth writing down
- Saturday, Oct. 17: 7:00 p.m. The last 7 o'clock sunset of 2026 on the island. Sunday it's 6:59, and that's the end of that.
- Saturday, Oct. 31: 6:48 p.m. Halloween stays light enough to see until about 7:12, when civil twilight ends. Plan the costume photos accordingly.
- Sunday, Nov. 1: 5:47 p.m. Daylight saving time ends at 2 a.m. that morning, per NIST, and the sunset jumps an hour earlier overnight. The sun didn't do anything. We did.
- Nov. 24 through Dec. 7: 5:36 p.m. The earliest sunset of the year, and it holds there for two straight weeks like it's waiting for someone to notice.
- Monday, Dec. 21: 5:41 p.m. The shortest day of the year. Sunset is already five minutes later than it was in early December.
The part that sounds wrong
The earliest sunset isn't on the shortest day, and the latest sunrise isn't either. Sunrise keeps sliding later right through New Year's Eve, when it's 7:21 a.m. The Naval Observatory has a whole page explaining that our clocks and the sun don't keep the same kind of time. The short version: the solstice is the shortest day overall, but neither the earliest sunset nor the latest sunrise lands on it.
The snowbird math
A 5:36 sunset sounds rough until you check what our seasonal neighbors are leaving behind. On Dec. 7, the same USNO data puts sunset in Boston at 4:12 and Toronto at 4:41.
On the solstice, the island gets 10 hours and 24 minutes of daylight. Boston gets 9 hours and 5 minutes. Toronto gets 8 hours and 56. That gap is basically the entire reason the license plates change color in November, and honestly, fair.
The fine print at the beach
Until Oct. 31, it's still sea turtle nesting season, and Manatee County's beach rules say no lights on the beach after sunset and beach furniture comes off the sand at dusk. So for the next few weeks, sunset is also the chair curfew. Which means the chair up top has about ten minutes before it's in violation.
Civil twilight, the stretch where the sky is still doing its thing, runs about 24 minutes past sunset this time of year. Tonight it ends at 7:36.
It does come back
Clocks spring forward on Sunday, March 14, 2027. The sun sets at 6:38 the night before and 7:39 that evening. Until then, bring the chair out a minute earlier every night.
— Sandy
