The winter solstice is the shortest day and longest night of the year. It’s also the first day of astronomical winter in the Northern Hemisphere. The sun appears directly over the Tropic of Capricorn, a line of latitude 23.5 degrees south of Earth’s equator. The winter solstice marks the longest day of the year in the Northern Hemisphere. The closer you move toward the North Pole, the less time the sun spends above the horizon. Temperatures are slightly out of sync with the length of the “solar day”.
