Sun In Your Eyes: Why we notice it more in the fall

You may have noticed that the sun is in your eyes now if you’re headed home from work in the early evening and you’re traveling west. This is pretty normal this time of year. During the summer, the northern hemisphere is tilted towards the sun so we get a more direct sun angle and it stays light a lot longer. In the summer, sunset is around 9pm, thus at 5pm (when folks are leaving work and headed home) the sun is still high in the sky and that is peak heating time as the sun had been at its highest point since Noon (for 5 hours).

As we get closer to winter and the earth slowly starts to tilt and the northern hemisphere starts to tilt away from the sun, the sun angle is less direct and sunset starts to get earlier. At this time of year, sunset is before 7:30pm. So at 5pm, since sunset is only about 2 and a half hours away, the sun is much lower on the horizon, right in front of your eyes as it sets in the west. Once we turn the clocks back in November, this won’t be a problem because it’ll be dark at 5pm.

As the temperatures cool and we receive more moisture and less sunlight, we start to see the changing of the color of the leaves. To see a photo gallery of beautiful fall foliage across the Miami Valley.

Cox Media Group