Winter Daylight in Every UK Town

What the figures show

• Penzance gets 2 hours 14 minutes more daylight than Lerwick on the shortest day: 8h 03m against 5h 49m, in the same country. (The Isles of Scilly, further south-west, get slightly more: 8h 05m at Hugh Town on St Mary's, which is too small for the table.)
• In Lerwick the sun sets before 4pm on 82 days of the year. In Edinburgh it is 51, in Leeds 45, in London 36. In Cardiff and Plymouth it never does.
• London has more pre-4pm sunsets than Birmingham (36 against 30), even though Birmingham is further north. London is further east, so its sun sets earlier by the clock.
• Lowestoft has more pre-4pm sunsets than Edinburgh (55 against 51), for the same reason: it is the most easterly town in the table.
• In Derry the sun never sets before 4pm; in Newcastle, at almost the same latitude, it does on 53 days. Derry is far enough west that its earliest sunset is 16:01. In Belfast it happens on 18 days.
• The earliest sunset is not on the shortest day. Across the table it falls between 12 and 16 December, up to 9 days before the solstice.
• Between the September equinox and the shortest day, Lerwick loses 6 hours 21 minutes of daylight and Penzance loses 4 hours 5 minutes.
• In 92 of the 736 places the sun never sets before 4pm. Everywhere in the table it sets before 5pm on at least 83 days.