DAYTON - Not only is it feeling like fall, but it’s starting to look like it too. Stormcenter 7 Meteorologist Ryan Marando here. This is the only part about fall the I don’t like! We lose about 70 minutes of daylight through the month of September... but why?
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It all has to do with how the seasons work! Our seasons are caused by Earth’s tilt and which hemisphere is pointed towards the sun. The past few months, the Northern Hemisphere (where we live) has been tilted towards the sun. That gives us the warm temperatures and the long days. It’s our summer time!
During this time of the year, the direct rays of the sun are in the Northern hemisphere. This means the sun takes long high arcs across the sky, which gives us early sunrises and late sunsets.
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The Autumn Equinox is on Monday, September 22, 2025 at 2:19 p.m. At this point in Earth’s orbit, it marks the time when the sun’s rays now are directly over the equator.
As the Earth continues to orbit the sun, the Northern Hemisphere becomes less and less tilted towards the sun, so we get the colder days in our winter season. Since the sun’s direct rays are now on the lower half of the planet, the sun has much lower arcs across the sky which means it rises later and sets earlier.
