SAN DIEGO, Calif — Tuesday morning marked the summer solstice in San Diego, the astronomical start to the summer season. With it, San Diegans will enjoy the longest day of the year on Tuesday. The sunrise was at 5:41 a.m. and the sunset at 8:00 p.m. (the latest it will even be in 2022), with a total daylength of 14 hours and 19 minutes.
From here through the end of the year, we will slowly lose time on our daylength -- beginning with just a few seconds shorter for the next few weeks but then losing close to 2 minutes a day by September. The summer in the Northern Hemisphere marks the north poles maximum tilt toward the sun and also the sun reaching the highest point in the sky for the longest duration.
Despite astronomical summer beginning on June 21, meteorological summer began on June 1. Many also signal the start of summer on Memorial Day, the last Monday in May. Regardless of where you mark 'summer,' conditions are much more likely to ebb and flow with a slow transition between the two norms of each season. It just so happens that in San Diego County and across a hefty portion of the Southwestern United States, conditions are really heating up this week. The match between astronomical summer and conditions feeling 'summerlike' is never guaranteed but is doing a good job of flexing this year.
On Monday, afternoon high temperatures were well above normal across San Diego County from the coast to inland valleys. Desert microclimates were by far the warmest in the county. Winterhaven, CA, on the California-Arizona border was the hottest spot in the nation on Monday at 107 degrees. But here locally, Ocotillo Wells and Borrego Wells were not far behind at 106 and 104 degrees, respectively.
For a look at what the local forecast looks like through the rest of this beautiful and hot first week of summer, check out our CBS 8 Weather page.
Now that the longest day is upon us, later sunrises and earlier sunsets are coming our way. By the autumnal equinox in September, the sun will rise at about 6:36 a.m. and will set around 6:46 p.m., giving us a nearly perfect 12 hours of daylength.
Come December, the winter solstice will signal the shortest day of the year and the closest tilt of the south pole to the sun. The sunrise will come around 6:46 a.m. and will set close to 4:45 p.m.
For now, however, we can enjoy the long days and plenty of sunshine beaming through with temperatures likely to keep warming up over the next several months.
MONDAY MORNING SUNRISE:
