About this map
Each county is colored by when the sun rises or sets at its geographic center, on any day of 2026. I calculated every time with the equations behind NOAA’s solar calculator1. Sunrise and sunset are the moments the top edge of the sun meets a flat horizon, allowing for the way the air bends its light2. Hills and mountains aren’t counted, so in a valley the sun comes up later and goes down earlier. All of North Carolina is on Eastern time3, and the sun runs 31 to 36 minutes later in Murphy than in Manteo, every day of the year.
Today’s clock springs forward to daylight saving time on the second Sunday in Mar and falls back on the first Sunday in Nov4,5: Mar 8 and Nov 1 in 2026. Under it, the sun rises by 8 a.m. every day in every county, and on the longest days it stays light past 8 p.m. Lock the clock on daylight saving time, and every county would get sunrises after 8 a.m. in late fall and winter, on 59 days a year in Manteo and 120 in Murphy. Lock it on standard time, and every summer sunset would come before 8 p.m., and in June the sun would rise in Manteo as early as 4:46 a.m.
Federal law lets a state stay on standard time all year, as Hawaii and most of Arizona do, but not on daylight saving time4,5. On July 14, 2026, the U.S. House passed the Sunshine Protection Act, which would make daylight saving time permanent; as of Oct 2026 it hasn’t passed the Senate6. The N.C. House passed bills in 2019, 2021 and 2023 to keep the state on daylight saving time all year if Congress allowed it, and none of them passed the state Senate7,8,9.