Sunrise and sunset times

How far it swings

The latest sunrise of the year, in a few cities, to show the scale of the problem:

All cities

Why this is a biology problem, not a willpower problem

Light hitting receptors in your eyes reports to the suprachiasmatic nucleus — the master clock in your brain. That signal ends melatonin production and starts the cortisol rise that produces the feeling of being awake. On a dark morning the signal never arrives, so you are asking a sleeping body to behave like an awake one.

The practical answers are covered in waking up when it is still dark outside and how light exposure fixes a sleep schedule. If you want a bedtime that fits an early winter alarm, the sleep calculator will work it out — and the clock change dates matter too, since an hour shift lands right when mornings are getting dark.