June Solstice 2021: When Summer Starts In Charlotte

CHARLOTTE, NC— After more than a year cooped up in the doldrums of the coronavirus pandemic, Charlotte residents are likely more than ready to kick off their shoes and take a dip in the warm, blue waters of summer.

Though warm temperatures have been here for a while, summer in Charlotte doesn’t officially start until Sunday.

The arrival of summer is timed to the annual summer solstice, which happens in Charlotte at 11:32 p.m.

The summer solstice, which also happens to fall on Father’s Day this year, marks the moment the sun reaches the Tropic of Cancer, its highest point. It also is the longest day of the year in the Northern Hemisphere.

On Sunday, the sun will rise at 6:07 a.m. in Charlotte and will set at 8:41 p.m., meaning we’ll see about 14 full hours of daylight.

The word “solstice” comes from the Latin words sol — meaning “sun” — and stitium, which means “standing,” according to The Old Farmer’s Almanac. On the summer solstice, the sun’s path stops advancing northward each day and appears to “stand still” in the sky before it reverses course and goes back in the opposite direction.

While June 21 is generally recognized as the first day of summer, no authoritative body has ever deemed when the seasons start. For example, Earthsky.org notes that in meteorology, summer actually starts on June 1.

Here are a few fun facts about the summer solstice, courtesy of The Old Farmer’s Almanac:

1. The sun sets more slowly on the summer solstice. This is related to the angle of the setting sun. The farther the sun sets from due west along the horizon, the shallower the angle of the setting sun.

2. The earliest sunrise of the year usually occurs before the summer solstice. The exact timing will depend in part on your latitude: In the mid-latitudes of the Northern Hemisphere, it occurs about a week before the June solstice.

3. The latest sunsets of the year will occur several days after the solstice. Again, it all depends on latitude.

4. June 20 actually marks the beginning of winter in the Southern Hemisphere.

5. Other planets have seasons, too. Uranus, which is tilted by almost 98 degrees, has seasons that last 21 years. Mercury, on the other hand, has virtually no tilt, which means it also has no seasons.