Sunrise After 6:30 AM, Computed for 13 Cities in 2027
In 2027 the sun rises after 6:30 am on 198 days in New York, 342 in Miami and 237 in Anchorage. Computed counts for 13 cities, plus after-7:00 totals.
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Miami’s sun rises after 6:30 am on 342 days of 2027, which is 342 mornings out of 365 when a 6:30 alarm goes off in the dark. New York gets 198 such days, Chicago 185, Seattle 216 and Anchorage 237; after 7:00 am the counts fall to 104, 91, 164 and 216.
I wrote this for DontSnooze, an alarm app where friends see whether you got up, which is why the 6:30 alarm is the unit of measurement here.
I wanted one number: for a given city, on how many days does a 6:30 alarm go off before sunrise? Almanac sites give one date at a time, so I computed the year’s total.
How was this computed?
I implemented the NOAA solar equations in Python (the sunrise algorithm behind the NOAA solar calculator) and ran every calendar day of 2027 for 13 cities. Sunrise is the sun’s upper edge at the horizon (zenith 90.833 degrees, which accounts for refraction and the sun’s radius). I converted each result to local clock time with Python’s zoneinfo database, so daylight saving is applied as each place applies it (Phoenix and Reykjavik do not change clocks, Sydney changes in the opposite season). The script is not published.
An independent re-run of the same equations with rounded city coordinates gave counts within 3 days of the table for six of the cities, so treat every count as good to a few days.
Limits: this is sea-level, flat-horizon sunrise. A ridge to the east or a tall building pushes real sunrise later. Treat errors as a minute or two, and any count within a few days of a cutoff as a tie.
How many days a year does the sun rise after 6:30 or 7:00 am?
| City | Days after 6:30 | Days after 7:00 | Latest sunrise | Earliest sunrise |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Miami | 342 | 155 | Nov 6, 7:32 | Jun 8, 6:28 |
| Phoenix | 162 | 103 | Jan 8, 7:33 | Jun 11, 5:17 |
| Los Angeles | 182 | 25 | Nov 6, 7:17 | Jun 11, 5:41 |
| Denver | 208 | 113 | Nov 6, 7:34 | Jun 13, 5:31 |
| Chicago | 185 | 91 | Nov 6, 7:29 | Jun 14, 5:14 |
| New York | 198 | 104 | Nov 6, 7:32 | Jun 13, 5:24 |
| Boston | 167 | 74 | Nov 6, 7:24 | Jun 14, 5:06 |
| Seattle | 216 | 164 | Nov 6, 8:01 | Jun 15, 5:10 |
| Minneapolis | 228 | 170 | Nov 6, 7:58 | Jun 15, 5:25 |
| Anchorage | 237 | 216 | Dec 26, 10:15 | Jun 18, 4:20 |
| London | 184 | 140 | Dec 30, 8:06 | Jun 16, 4:42 |
| Reykjavik | 210 | 190 | Dec 24, 11:23 | Jun 20, 2:55 |
| Sydney | 157 | 29 | Apr 3, 7:08 | Oct 2, 5:31 |
Counts are days out of 365 on which local clock sunrise is strictly later than the cutoff.
Why does Miami have more late sunrises than Los Angeles?
Latitude is not the main driver in the lower 48. Position within the time zone is. Miami sits about 5.2 degrees of longitude west of the meridian its clocks are set to (75 degrees west), and each degree is four minutes, so the sun arrives about 21 minutes later by the clock than it would on the meridian. That is why a city at 25.8 degrees north has 155 days after 7:00, while Los Angeles, at 34 degrees north and much closer to the middle of its zone, has 25.
The same effect shows up in the other rows. Seattle (216 days after 6:30) and Minneapolis (228) are both west of their zone meridians.
Why is the latest sunrise in early November, not December?
In U.S. cities that change their clocks, the latest clock-time sunrise of 2027 is November 6, the day before clocks go back on November 7. In New York that is 7:32 am. The next morning the sun rises at 6:33, and it never gets back to 7:32 that year: New York’s January peak is 7:20.
Cities that skip the change behave differently. Phoenix peaks on January 8, Reykjavik on December 24 (11:23), and the U.S. Naval Observatory says the latest sunrise at mid-northern latitudes falls in early January, later than the solstice. Sydney mirrors the pattern: latest sunrise April 3 (7:08), earliest October 2.
Do the counts survive a permanent clock?
The counts assume clocks keep changing twice a year. If the U.S. made daylight time permanent, the winter rows would shift about an hour later: Seattle’s January sunrise would move from roughly 7:57 to roughly 8:57. I did not recompute a permanent-daylight-time year, so that is arithmetic, not output. For what those two clock changes do to a fixed alarm on the phone itself, see this write-up on timezone drift.
More from the table
Is it dark at sunrise, or before it?
Sunrise is the moment the sun’s upper edge crosses the horizon, so the sky brightens before it. The U.S. Naval Observatory defines the start of morning civil twilight as the sun 6 degrees below the horizon, which happens before sunrise by an amount that depends on latitude and season. A city with a 6:45 sunrise is already gray at 6:30.
Why is the latest sunrise not on the winter solstice?
Solar noon drifts later on the clock through late December (the equation of time), which pushes sunrise later even after days begin lengthening. At mid-northern latitudes the latest sunrise lands in early January, per the U.S. Naval Observatory. London shows it: its clocks changed weeks earlier, so its latest sunrise is December 30 at 8:06.
Would the counts be the same in a different year?
Nearly, but not exactly. Sunrise times repeat to within about a minute from year to year, so counts near a cutoff can move by a few days. The bigger variable is the clock-change calendar: the U.S. changes on March 14 and November 7 in 2027, and Sydney on April 4 and October 3.
Which cities change least between winter and summer sunrise?
Of the 13, Miami has the narrowest swing, about 64 minutes between its latest and earliest sunrise. Reykjavik has the widest, 8 hours 28 minutes, and Anchorage is next at 5 hours 55 minutes.
If you would rather not watch the first sunrise of the season alone, there is a small research case for doing it side by side with a friend. For the opposite end of the year, a separate calculation finds that the latest sunrise arrives 6 to 22 days after the winter solstice.