Daylight hours in various resort areas

Winter brings snow, which is great, but it also brings many more hour of darkness, which isn’t necessarily great. For one thing,  seasonal affective disorder, a form of depression, is associated with a decreasing number of daylight hours. Plus, you might simply want to have a little extra time for walking about town after you put your snowboard away for the day.

If you want to maximize your daylight hours on your winter vacation, you can travel further south. Just to illustrate the point, consider two cities not usually thought of as ski destinations: Fargo, North Dakota and Port Isabel, which is in Texas, near San Padre Island. They are roughly the same longitude, so the major difference between the two is how close they are to the equator. Port Isabel is much further south: it is 26 degrees north of the equator versus Fargo’s 46. As a result, on February 15, 2011, it receives an additional 98 minute of sunlight. You can’t go snowboarding in Port Isabel (at any time of year!), but again, the point is to illustrate the principle. To see a more reasonable example, on January 15, you’ll get another 51 minutes of daylight by choosing Taos, New Mexico over Big Sky, Montana.

A second way to extend the number of daylight hours on your vacation is to schedule it later in the year. For example, if you go to Big Sky, Montana on March 15 rather than January 15, you’ll get an extra 1 hour and 49 minutes of daylight. Alyeska, Alaska, offers an even more extreme contrast. On January 15, you’ll have but 6 hours and 25 minute of sunlight. By March 15, that window expands to 11 hour, 44 minutes, a gain of 4 hours, 52 minutes.

Unfortunately, inserting images is beyond my WordPress ability, so you’ll have to click Hour of daylight at selected resorts to see a one-page table with more information.

Opting for more daylight has tradeoffs. Go later in the season and you may risk having less favorable snow conditions. But you might want to consider adding some light to your vacation.