RALEIGH, N.C. (WNCN) — It’s the proverbial shortest day of the year; the winter solstice arrives Thursday.

It’s when the Earth is tilted the furthest away from the North Pole, with the sun squarely over the Tropic of Capricorn, or about 23 and a half degrees latitude south of the Equator.

We see just 9 hours and 43 minutes of daylight on the solstice, making it the day with the least amount of sunlight in 2023. Summer officially begins in the southern hemisphere, while winter takes over for us.

What’s ironic about the winter solstice is that it doesn’t have the earliest sunset or sunrise times of the year. The earliest sunset is at 5:00 p.m., which happens from December 1 thru December 10. The latest sunrise happens at 7:25 a.m., from January 5 through January 8. Also, the average coldest day of the year comes on January 15, not the first day of winter.

The days will start getting longer on Friday, but we’ll only get about 18 more minutes of daylight between the solstice and mid-January. But then, between January 16 and February 18, we gain nearly an hour of daylight; with 11 hours of sunlight by mid-February.