Today is the winter solstice - the shortest day of the year

Today marks the winter solstice, which brings us the shortest day of the year.

It’s also part of an important marker which, along with the summer solstice, autumn and spring equinox, mark the transition between the seasons.

The solstice is observed as a particular point in time, when the sun is directly over the Tropic of Capricorn.

It changes every year but today that time is 10.22pm and will mark the start of winter on the astronomical calendar.

Meteorologically we are already three weeks into the season.

After a bit of a spell of wet and windy weather today looks mostly dry and you should see some sunshine. That sun at noon will be at its lowest in the sky all year, before it sets shortly after 4 pm giving us just less than 8 hours of daylight.

From tomorrow we’ll see the days get ever so slightly longer until they reach the summer solstice on 21 June, where hopefully we’ll bask in more than 16 hours of sunshine.