Have you noticed it getting darker much quicker? It is because this is the time of year when the daylight hours shorten at their fastest rate.
Fall starts this year on Saturday, Sept. 23 at 2:30 a.m., and it will coincide with a nice cool morning likely to reach 62 degrees in Jacksonville. It hasn’t been this cool in the morning in 108 days!
It will take some time for the leaves to turn colors, but the shorter days forthcoming will trigger the plant’s programming to start shedding leaves.
Days have been growing shorter since the end of June, but by the end of summer, the days are shortening the fastest.
For the next two weeks, Jacksonville will lose 1 minute and 48 seconds of daylight each day. Thereafter sunlight will continue to get shorter through Dec. 21, but at a slower pace. For instance, by Thanksgiving, the days shorten by only a minute per day until the difference reaches zero around the Winter solstice. Thereafter the days start lengthening.
Places farther north experience larger day-to-day differences. In Toronto, the day of the fall equinox is just under 3 minutes shorter than the previous day; in Puerto Rico, roughly 1,900 miles farther south, the difference is only about 1 minute and 2 seconds.