2024 Winter Solstice
Thursday, December 21 at 10:57 am EST
How many days until winter?
Winter 2024 Begins In
The winter solstice, or December solstice, will be Saturday, Dec. 21, 2024, marking the first day of winter.
In the Northern Hemisphere, winter generally begins on December 21 or 22. This is the winter solstice, the day of the year with the shortest period of daylight. The word solstice comes from the Latin words for “sun” and “to stand still”.
The variation in the date of the winter solstice is due to our calendar system as well as the earth’s rotation at an angle. In the Southern Hemisphere, the winter solstice is around June 20 or 21. Many refer to Astronomical Winter generally as December 21 or 22, as the first “official” day of winter.
More importantly, The meteorological start of winter is December 1.
Can the first day of winter change? Yes, during leap years.
Calendar system: The Earth takes 365.256 days to orbit the sun, but our calendar system counts years of 365 or 366 days.