Early Dark in November: An Hour of Clock, a Minute of Sun

Step outside in New York at 5 p.m. on Saturday, October 31, 2026, and the sun is still above the horizon. Step outside at the same clock time on Sunday and it has already set, at 4:52 p.m. Almost none of that change happened in the sky. At 2 a.m. on November 1, most of the United States leaves daylight saving time, and every sunset suddenly reads an hour earlier. The sun’s own retreat is slower and steadier. It also does something odd in December: sunsets start getting later again while the days are still getting shorter.

Sunset on November 1 and at its low point, city by city

The table uses US Naval Observatory (USNO) times for 2026, in standard time. The observatory rounds to the minute, so the earliest sunset shows up as a run of days with the same time and is listed as a date range.

USNO rise/set data, 2026, local standard time. The “fall” column is our subtraction.

Two patterns stand out. The low point arrives broadly later as you go north, from late November in Miami to mid-December in Seattle. New York’s and Chicago’s date ranges overlap because of that rounding, so their order in the table is not meaningful. And in every city the December 21 sunset is two to six minutes later than the earliest one, even though December 21 has the least daylight of the year.

How much is the clock, and how much is the sun

The clock part is set by federal law. Under 15 U.S.C. § 260a, daylight saving time ends “at 2 o’clock antemeridian on the first Sunday of November” and starts again on the second Sunday of March. The current dates were set by the Energy Policy Act of 2005. In 2026 the first Sunday of November is November 1.

The change itself is exactly one hour. New York’s sunset on November 1 is 4:52 p.m. EST; on daylight time, the same moment would read 5:52 p.m. From one evening to the next in early November, the sun’s own shift is about a minute. So when Sunday’s sunset reads roughly an hour earlier than Saturday’s, all but about a minute of that is the clock.

The hour does not vanish. It moves to the morning: New York’s sunrise on November 1 comes at 6:26 a.m. EST, an hour earlier on the clock than it would have on daylight time. Day length stays the same. The clocks only shift where the daylight sits in the waking day.

How many minutes of daylight disappear each day

Day length is the gap between sunrise and sunset. In New York on November 1, the sun rises at 6:26 a.m. and sets at 4:52 p.m., which gives 10 hours 26 minutes of daylight. On November 2 it rises at 6:28 and sets at 4:51: 10 hours 23 minutes, three minutes less in a single day.

Single days can mislead, because rounded times wobble by a minute either way. A longer span is steadier. New York goes from 10 hours 26 minutes on November 1 to 9 hours 22 minutes on December 7 (sunrise 7:06 a.m., sunset 4:28 p.m.). That is 64 minutes over 36 days, about 1.8 minutes a day on average. The loss is fastest in early November and slows toward the solstice, when the day bottoms out at 9 hours 15 minutes (7:17 a.m. to 4:32 p.m. on December 21).

Latitude also changes the starting point. Seattle begins November with less light: sunrise at 6:54 a.m. and sunset at 4:51 p.m. give 9 hours 57 minutes, 29 minutes less than New York on the same date.

Why the earliest sunset comes before the shortest day

If day length were the only factor, the earliest sunset would land on the solstice, on or about December 21. It doesn’t, because clock time and sun time drift apart over the year. Astronomers call the gap the equation of time. The USNO’s explanation of the equation of time says the difference “can reach as much as 16 minutes.”

Two features of Earth’s motion cause it. The 23.4° tilt of Earth’s axis contributes up to 10 minutes either way. The orbit’s eccentricity, a measure of how far it departs from a circle, is 0.0167 and adds up to 7.5 minutes either way, peaking in early April and early October. In late December the Sun moves across the sky at its slowest rate, and each solar day, noon to noon, is almost 0.5 minute longer than 24 hours. Solar noon therefore lands a little later on the clock each day, and sunrise and sunset move with it.

Near the solstice the day’s length barely changes, so that drift wins. The observatory’s example for 40°N on December 15: the shrinking day pushes sunrise about 1/4 minute later and pulls sunset about 1/4 minute earlier, while the clock effect pushes both about 1/2 minute later. Net, sunset already moves about 1/4 minute later each day, and sunrise, pushed later by both effects, keeps getting later. The turning point comes where half the daily change in day length matches the daily change in the equation of time. At 40°N that puts the earliest sunset around December 8 and the latest sunrise around January 5. New York fits: sunset bottoms out at 4:28 p.m. on December 6-9 and is back to 4:32 p.m. on the solstice.

The National Weather Service office in Lincoln, Illinois, describes the same pattern at about 40°N: the earliest sunsets fall in the first several days of December, and sunrises keep getting later until around New Year’s Day. The spread between those two dates depends on latitude. USNO notes that it is wider at lower latitudes and narrower at higher ones, which is why Miami’s low point arrives in late November and Seattle’s in mid-December. At the equator itself, the earliest sunset comes around November 2 and the latest sunrise around February 11.

Canada, the UK and Australia

Most of Canada falls back on the same schedule as the US, at 2 a.m. local time on Sunday, November 1, 2026. Daylight saving there is set by provincial law, and Yukon, Saskatchewan and parts of British Columbia, Quebec and Nunavut do not observe it, so those areas skip the overnight jump.

Britain moved first. UK clocks go back an hour at 2 a.m. on the last Sunday in October, which in 2026 was October 25. For the week until November 1, London is four hours ahead of New York instead of the usual five.

Australia runs on the opposite schedule. New South Wales, Victoria, South Australia, Tasmania, the ACT and Norfolk Island moved their clocks forward on the first Sunday in October and go back on the first Sunday in April. Queensland, the Northern Territory and Western Australia do not use daylight saving. November there is the run-up to summer, with no clock change darkening the evenings.

What could shift these numbers

Each time is for one set of coordinates per city and is rounded to the minute, so treat the figures as accurate to about a minute.

The calendar dates are for 2026. The first Sunday of November moves from year to year, and falls between November 2 and 7 in other years, since November 1 is the earliest the rule allows. The earliest-sunset dates stay close to where they are, because they follow Earth’s tilt and orbit rather than a calendar rule.

The clock half also depends on law. Section 260a fixes the current dates, and a change by Congress would move or remove the November jump. It would not move the early-December low point.