Daylight Hours in North Dakota
North Dakota is the northernmost of the contiguous states after Minnesota and it is split between Central and Mountain time, with the line running through Dunn, McKenzie and Sioux counties rather than around them.
Fargo is losing about 23 minutes of daylight a weekToday in Fargo, and today where you are
Central time, 46.9 degrees northEvery figure on this page is computed for Fargo, the largest city in North Dakota at the 2020 census. That is a real answer for a lot of the state and the wrong answer for the rest of it, so the box below gives you your own.
Today in Fargo
October 19
- Civil twilight begins7:20 AM
- Sunrise7:51 AM
- Solar noon1:12 PM
- Sunset6:32 PM
- Civil twilight ends7:03 PM
- Daylight10h 41m
Reading the U.S. Naval Observatory for this point. The times above are this site’s own calculation until it answers.
These times assume a flat, unobstructed horizon. USNO puts it this way: “Sunrise and sunset conventionally refer to the times when the upper edge of the disk of the Sun is on the horizon, considered unobstructed relative to the location of interest.” A ridge, a hill or a building to your west will end your afternoon earlier than any published time, sometimes by twenty minutes or more, and no sunset table anywhere can tell you by how much.
Check this point and date at U.S. Naval Observatory Astronomical Applications Department
North Dakota’s daylight year
- Longest day15h 52mJune 21
- Shortest day8h 31mDecember 21
- Difference across the year7h 21mset by Fargo's latitude of 46.9 degrees north
- Earliest sunset4:38 PMDecember 10, not the shortest day
- Sun against the clock27 min lateFargo sits 7 degrees west of the Central time meridian
- Longest day June 21
- Shortest day December 21
- Earliest sunset December 10
- Latest sunrise January 1
Fargo runs from 15h 52m of daylight on June 21 down to 8h 31m on December 21, a difference of 7h 21m across the year. That single number is almost entirely a latitude fact, and it puts North Dakota 3rd of the fifty states for how much its day length moves.
The curve above is drawn from a real day by day calculation rather than from a smooth wave, which is why the two most useful marks on it are not where people expect. The earliest sunset falls on December 10, roughly two weeks before the shortest day, and the latest sunrise on January 1, roughly two weeks after it. Solar noon drifts later through the winter, which drags the whole day later against the clock while the day itself is still shortening. The evening end loses that race first and wins it back first, so the afternoons start drawing out well before the solstice while the mornings keep getting darker.
North Dakota daylight milestones in 2026
Next up in Fargo: Clocks go back on November 1.
- January 1
Latest sunrise
Sunrise 8:13 AM · Sunset 4:49 PM · 8h 36m of daylight
In the new year, not in December, and for the mirror image of the reason the earliest sunset came early.
- March 8
Clocks go forward
Sunrise 7:53 AM · Sunset 7:23 PM · 11h 30m of daylight
The evening gains an hour on the clock overnight, and the morning loses one. The sun does nothing different.
- March 8
First 7 PM sunset
Sunrise 7:53 AM · Sunset 7:23 PM · 11h 30m of daylight
The evening most people actually notice, and the reason the clock change lands when it does.
- March 17
Days pass twelve hours
Sunrise 7:36 AM · Sunset 7:36 PM · 12h 00m of daylight
A few days before the spring equinox rather than on it, because sunrise and sunset are measured at the sun's upper edge and the atmosphere bends the light.
- June 21
Longest day
Sunrise 5:33 AM · Sunset 9:25 PM · 15h 52m of daylight
The June solstice. The sun stands at its highest and the year turns around.
- September 25
Days fall under twelve hours
Sunrise 7:18 AM · Sunset 7:19 PM · 12h 01m of daylight
A few days after the September equinox, for the same reason the spring crossing came early.
- October 4
Last 7 PM sunset
Sunrise 7:30 AM · Sunset 7:01 PM · 11h 31m of daylight
The end of the long evenings, usually weeks before anyone starts mentioning it.
- November 1
Clocks go back
Sunrise 7:10 AM · Sunset 5:11 PM · 10h 01m of daylight
The afternoon loses an hour on the clock overnight. This is the single largest change in the daylight year and none of it is astronomical.
- December 10
Earliest sunset
Sunrise 8:02 AM · Sunset 4:38 PM · 8h 36m of daylight
Not the shortest day. It arrives about two weeks early, because solar noon is still drifting later at the same time the day is still shortening.
- December 21
Shortest day
Sunrise 8:10 AM · Sunset 4:41 PM · 8h 31m of daylight
The December solstice, and the only milestone here that is about the length of the day rather than the position of one end of it.
North Dakota and its time zone
A time zone is an hour of real solar time wide, so two places on the same clock can be nearly an hour apart in what the sun is actually doing. Fargo sits 7 degrees west of the meridian Central time is built around, which puts solar noon about 27 minutes after clock noon and shifts every sunrise and sunset in North Dakota later than the same latitude would give on the eastern side of the zone. On top of that, North Dakota moves its clocks: CST in winter, CDT from the second Sunday in March to the first Sunday in November.
On the longest day of 2026, the sun sets about 30 minutes later at North Dakota’s western edge than at its eastern one, on the same clock, because the state is about 7.5 degrees of longitude wide. North to south the difference is one of length rather than clock time, worth about 28 minutes of daylight across the state’s 3.1 degrees of latitude.
Both of those figures are the spread across North Dakota, not an error bar on Fargo. For an exact answer at an exact place, the ZIP box near the top of this page takes any US ZIP code.
North Dakota keeps more than one clock
Southwestern North Dakota keeps Mountain time: Stark (Dickinson), Adams, Billings, Bowman, Golden Valley, Hettinger and Slope counties, plus parts of Dunn, McKenzie and Sioux counties. Fargo, Bismarck and Minot keep Central.
Mountain time: Adams, Billings, Bowman, Golden Valley, Hettinger, Slope, Stark counties.
The boundary runs through Dunn, McKenzie, Sioux counties rather than around them. Two addresses a few miles apart there can keep different clocks, so the ZIP tool above names the county it used and says when the county itself is divided.
U.S. Naval Observatory, Rise, Set, and Twilight Definitions“Civil twilight begins in the morning, and ends in the evening, when the center of the Sun is geometrically 6 degrees below the horizon. This is the limit at which twilight illumination is sufficient, under good weather conditions, for terrestrial objects to be clearly distinguished.”
Civil twilight is the reason a sunset time is not the same as the end of the day. In Fargo on the longest day of the year the sun sets at 9:25 PM and civil twilight runs on until 10:05 PM, another 40 minutes of usable light. On the shortest day the same gap is only 35 minutes, because the sun is dropping toward the horizon at a steeper angle in winter than in summer.
The states with the biggest daylight years
| State | Reference city | Longest | Shortest | Change across the year |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Alaska | Anchorage | 19h 23m | 5h 27m | 13h 56m |
| Washington | Seattle | 15h 59m | 8h 25m | 7h 34m |
| North Dakota | Fargo | 15h 52m | 8h 31m | 7h 21m |
| Montana | Billings | 15h 44m | 8h 40m | 7h 04m |
| Oregon | Portland | 15h 41m | 8h 42m | 6h 59m |
| Minnesota | Minneapolis | 15h 37m | 8h 46m | 6h 51m |
| Vermont | Burlington | 15h 33m | 8h 50m | 6h 43m |
| Idaho | Boise | 15h 27m | 8h 56m | 6h 31m |
| Maine | Portland | 15h 26m | 8h 56m | 6h 30m |
| South Dakota | Sioux Falls | 15h 26m | 8h 56m | 6h 30m |
| Wisconsin | Milwaukee | 15h 23m | 9h 00m | 6h 23m |
| New Hampshire | Manchester | 15h 22m | 9h 00m | 6h 22m |
Ranked by how much each state’s day length changes between its longest and shortest day, at the state’s largest city. North Dakota is 3 of 50 on that measure.
North Dakota daylight FAQ
The rest of the North Dakota sky
Daylight hours in nearby states
Every time on this page is computed from the published NOAA solar position equations and reconciled against the U.S. Naval Observatory, which is the reference this site defers to: across 343 USNO days at stations from Miami to Utqiagvik, every sunrise, sunset and civil twilight time agrees to within one minute and most agree exactly. Time zone boundaries and the daylight saving dates are statutory, from 49 CFR part 71 and 15 U.S.C. 260a. Daylight hours by state.