Wait, What… the Summer Solstice is NOT on June 21 This Year?

Everything I know is a lie. The Summer Solstice is not June 21 this year, and it's never been June 21 during any leap year. How are we just finding this out now? 

Ok, fine, maybe you knew that this year, in 2024, the Summer Solstice is today, June 20, but I just found out.

And I asked around, and no one else seemed to know about this either.

But it turns out during leap year, the Summer Solstice gets bumped up by 18 hours and ends up being on June 20, not June 21, every time!

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NPR shared the news today too, exclaiming that the solstice is the earliest it's been in two hundred years!

Now that statement is true, but they're talking specifics, like day, hour and second. The last time it was this early was in 1796. George Washington was still president!

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To be extremely precise, the solstice will occur at 3:51 p.m. central time today, so hopefully you're doing something summery at that exact moment. I don't have high hopes for myself or anyone else here in Rockford because it's likely going to be storming at that moment.

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The best part of the Summer Solstice arriving, whether you knew it was today or thought it was tomorrow... is that now it's officially officially officially summer.

Whether you think summer starts on Memorial Day Weekend, or June 1st, or after the Summer Solstice, we can all agree that as of today, it's summer.

Now enough of this solstice talk because it's a really hard word to spell.