Today is the shortest day of the year for us

The winter solstice occurs when either of Earth's poles reaches its maximum tilt away from the sun.  This happens twice yearly, once in each hemisphere.  In the Northern Hemisphere, it happens every December and marks the shortest day of the year.  I'm in the half that's officially now winter.  It officially begins at 3:20 a.m. today, so that's when I've set this to post.

As I looked for illustrations, I also learned that Alaska experiences the shortest daylight hours in my country.  In Fairbanks, sunrise on Dec. 21 is 10:58 a.m. and sunset is 2:40 p.m., so they'll less than four hours of daylight today.