Skip to main content
Partly Cloudy icon
50º

Less sun, less heat!

Morning Click2pin from Gloria

A lot of us felt a little better this morning as a north breeze swept in drier air. Dew points, those temperatures which tell us how much moisture is really out there, dropped into the 50s just about everywhere and even Galveston dropped to 64° for a dew point. That feels wonderful and the cover shot today is from this morning’s sunrise. I think most folks enjoyed a temporary morning of relief!

Speaking of which, a number of you have asked if shorter days will help with this heat and they certainly will. And they are on the way.

Today’s sunrise and sunset gives us a little more than 13 hours of daylight. And, of course, that sun is high in the sky for 11 of them.

Sunrise to sunset gives us just over 13 hours of daylight!

As the autumnal equinox comes our way in a little more than a month, daylight will get shorter and shorter. While tomorrow the 17th we are right at an 8pm sunset, in a month we’ll drop to 7:30 for sunsets and then in mid-October we’ll be a bit before 7 p.m.

From 8pm to 7:30 to just before 7--sooner sunsets are on the way

And while Congress has flirted with the idea of not changing our clocks back an hour, we are still on track to do that on November 5th which will knock a full hour off sunset--in fact, 5:31pm! And as I like to call it, November is No-90s November. We have never gotten to 90° in the month of November at Bush/IAH although Hobby has made it four times (three of them in 2017).

And then we’re in dark mode for a while! In fact, after our 8pm sunset tomorrow evening we don’t get back to 8pm sunsets until May 3rd! You can see all the sunsets between October 7th and March 9th are even before 7pm.

Sunsets into next year

Bottom line: we deserve a change in seasons after this summer and we can certainly do with at least a little less daylight. And that is on the way.

We are having another hot weekend and the gulf might perk up a bit next week, so a lot to watch and track.

Frank

Email me with comments and questions!


About the Authors
Frank Billingsley headshot

KPRC 2's chief meteorologist with four decades of experience forecasting Houston's weather.

Caroline Brown headshot

Meteorologist, 6th generation Texan, country music lover, patio seeker