The Winter Darkness Arrives

We're heading into the shortest days of the year and it's becoming very, very obvious how short they are.

While sunset these days is not that different from New York, you really see it in the morning. Here is my neighborhood at 8 a.m. today:


And the same block, at about 8:45 (15 minutes after sunrise):


As you can see, the omnipresent winter clouds don't help.

It's noticeably better than in London, which is at about the same longitude as Paris but keeps its clocks an hour earlier. When I was there a couple of weeks ago, not only did it get dark by 4 p.m. but the sun was at such a low angle in the sky it felt like late afternoon the whole day.

Paris is farther north than Montreal, and almost as far north as Vancouver, but it is a couple hundred miles south of London, enough that the sun (when it is out) doesn't feel like a refugee from another world here.

Still, every visitor I've had thus far has remarked on how late-rising the Parisians are; at this time of year, they have a pretty good excuse for it.