You're not imagining it: The sun is on the move.
The long nights and short days of winter are rapidly giving way to much more daylight, part of a fascinating and unbalanced yearly cycle.
While sunrise and sunset times are constantly on the move, sunlight rapidly increases in March (and rapidly decreases in September).
During the month of March, some parts of the United States will add over an hour-and-a-half of sun by the end of the month. Even Florida will gain 40 to 50 minutes of daylight during March. The change in daylight is least noticeable around the solstices in June and December, when sunlight varies by just seconds during the month.
The increase in daylight, or the amount of time the sun spends above the horizon, will be most obvious in the northernmost parts of the U.S., which will face the sun more directly as the Northern Hemisphere tilts toward the sun on Earth's axis at a 23.5-degree angle, according to Brandon Buckingham, a meteorologist at AccuWeather.
Separately,daylight saving timestarts March 8. The time change doesn't affect how much daylight there is, but it does shift the clocks so that the sun sets at a later time.
March also marks the ushering in of the spring season, withmeteorologistsmarking the season change on the first of the month. Most people recognize the first day ofastronomical spring on March 20.
Why do we gain so much daylight in March?
Variations in the amount of daylight we see during the year are due to the tilt of the Earth's axis and whether the Northern Hemisphere is facing toward or away from the sun.
Earth orbits the sun at an angle, 23.5 degrees to be exact. In the Northern Hemisphere, where the U.S. is, Earth is tilted toward the sun in the summer and away in the winter; the Southern Hemisphere experiences the opposite. As the Earth's axis gradually tilts our hemisphere more toward the sun, and we experience lengthening days.
We have been gaining daylight since Dec. 21, 2025,the shortest day of the year in the Northern Hemisphereand the winter solstice, when the sun is the farthest south in the Southern Hemisphere. The increase of daylight at first was imperceptible at just seconds per day, but the month of March will see the most dramatic increases, an average of three minutes per day depending on your exact location, according to theOld Farmer's Almanac.
There are two times during the Earth's rotation of the sun over the course of a year that the axis of the Earth is tilted neither toward or away from the sun; we call themequinoxes, and they mark roughly equal periods of day and night.
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After the spring equinox, or vernal equinox, on March 20, there will be more daylight than night each day across the Northern Hemisphere.
Though it's most noticeable in March, daylight will continue to increase until we reach the summer solstice in June. Then, daylight will again decrease through the winter solstice in December.
This is how much daylight you could gain in March
The amount of daylight gained in March will vary from north to south, Buckingham said.
"Northern areas of the country [experience] the most increase in in sunlight hours during the day and the Southern United States [experiences] the least amount of increase, although all areas across the U.S. increase in terms of sunlight hours per day," he said.
The amount of daylight gained from March 1 to March 31 will range from about 40 minutes at the southernmost tips of Texas and Florida to 100 minutes in the northern parts of states including North Dakota, Washington and Idaho.
There is a bit of a lag in timing, but the increasing daylight hours will also usher in a rise in temperature, Buckingham said.
Here's how daylight will increase in March in some U.S. cities, according to data from the U.S. Naval Observatory Astronomical Applications Department:
Charlotte, North Carolina: about 1 hour and 7 minutes
Chicago: about 1 hour and 24 minutes
New York City: about 1 hour and 21 minutes
Seattle: about 1 hour and 43 minutes
Duluth, Minnesota: about 1 hour and 41 minutes
Brownsville, Texas: about 45 minutes
Miami: about 45 minutes
The daylight increases are split roughly evenly between morning and evening hours, Buckingham said.
Daylight saving time, too
Daylight saving time begins at 2 a.m. on March 8, whenclocks "spring forward"one hour and we lose an hour of sleep.
When do we spring forward?Daylight saving time is coming
All states, except Hawaii and most of Arizona observe the change, which each yearsparks fresh debateover whether the custom should be done away with altogether.
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY:Daylight saving time arrives amid a March sunlight explosion