When will the sun set on the USA?

I was recently part of an online discussion that asked this question. People were talking about industry, democracy, civil society, world leadership, you name it. But nobody was asking the obvious question: when, in fact, will the sun set on the United States?

Yes, I’m going there.

As we all know, the continental United States has four time zones:

— so when the sun sets in Seattle today, at 7:54 PM, it will be nearly midnight in New York or Miami.

However!  There’s much, much more to the US than just the 48 contiguous or “continental” states.  Let’s zoom out a little:

You’ll notice there’s a pale green band to the east of the US, covering Canada’s Maritime Provinces and a lot of the Caribbean.  This is “Atlantic Time”, and it’s one hour ahead of the US East Coast.  And if you enlarge or peer closely, you’ll see that there are two United States possessions — Puerto Rico and the US Virgin Islands — down in the lower right-hand corner.  So that’s a fifth time zone.

Meanwhile, to the /west/ of the continental USA is Alaska.  And Alaska is so huge that it covers two time zones.  “Mainland” Alaska is an hour behind California and the US West Coast, while the Aleutian Islands are two hours behind. 

[Adak National Forest, Aleutian Islands.  If you know, you know.]

Most of the state of Hawaii is also in this time zone, which is cleverly named the “Hawaii-Aleutian Time Zone”.  So when the sun sets in Honolulu at 6:50 PM tonight, it will already be nearly 2 AM in Puerto Rico.

But we’re not done yet.  Continuing west, in the central Pacific we find Midway Atoll and,  a couple of thousand kilometers to the south, the lovely islands of American Samoa (or AmSam, as the cool kids say).  Both are United States possessions — American Samoans are US nationals, thank you very much — and both are an hour behind Hawaii.

And we’re still not quite done.  Because far out in the empty wastes of the blue Pacific are Howland Island and Baker Island.  Located about halfway between Hawaii and Australia, these small uninhabited islands are US possessions — formally, they’re “United States Minor Outlying Islands”.  Baker Island is a US National Wildlife Refuge.

And they’re another hour further west — two hours behind Hawaii.

Wow, nine time zones!  Are we done?

Not quite.  Because if we now skip over a time zone and jump back /two/ hours, we will find ourselves in the western Pacific — the same time zone as most of Australia and the Russian Far East.  And here we will find more American territory: Guam, and the Commonwealth of the Northern Marianas Islands (CNMI).  Despite being way the heck over on the far side of the Pacific, much closer to Shanghai or Manila than to California or even Hawaii, these are all US islands inhabited by US citizens. 




So in total, from the Caribbean to the CNMI, the USA stretches across an eye-watering 11 time zones.

The capital and largest island of the CNMI is Saipan.  And when the sun sets on Saipan at 7:17 PM tonight, it will be 5:17 AM in the US Virgin Islands.  The sun will rise there at 6:04 AM.  So — it seems — there will be about 45 minutes of night on America.  11 time zones is a lot, but it’s not quite enough.  Maybe the Sun never set on the British Empire, but it does set on the USA, at least sometimes. 

(I actually checked to see if adding territorial waters would make a difference.  That gives us an extra 12 miles each way.  Nope — it only adds another couple of minutes of sunshine.  Adding the 200 mile Exclusive Economic Zone would nearly do it, but that would be, in my opinion, cheating.)  

[actual Saipan sunset, yes it really looks like that]

But wait!  The United States also extends quite far /north/.  Its northernmost point is at Point Barrow, on the northernmost coast of Alaska.  Point Barrow is about nine miles / 15 km north of the surprisingly large and busy town of Utqiagvik, which is pronounced like it’s spelled.  If you fly into Utqiagvik — you can’t drive there, no road reaches it — it’s easy to get a ride up to Point Barrow, weather permitting.

At over 71 degrees north, Point Barrow is well above the Arctic Circle.  This means it is in the Land of the Midnight Sun.  Specifically, it means that the Sun stays above the horizon for months at a time, from April through August.

Right now, the Sun is spiraling lower and lower.  It’s grazing the horizon for several hours per day.  But it hasn’t actually set, not quite yet.  It won’t formally, officially go down for a few more days:  September 5, 2025.

And so at last we have our answer.  When will the sun set on the United States of America?

Next week.