Equinox and dark mornings

I have just been reading a friend's blog talking about the equinox phenomenon, the two days in the year (March 21st and September 21st) when everyone, everywhere in the world has 12 hours of daylight and 12 hours of darkness. I was interested to read that parts the US have moved their 'daylight saving' back by a couple of weeks this year. This helped to clear up something which had been puzzling me since we arrived in Miami, which is the four-hour time difference to the UK, instead of the normal five. This is because on the day we arrived Miami (along with the whole of the Eastern time and Central time states) had just put their clocks forward one hour, whereas the UK moves their clocks forward this coming weekend, creating a two-week window where there is only a four-hour difference.

I have particularly noticed the difference this has made to the mornings, especially as it took me a whole week to adjust to the six-hour time difference from our last location, which was Cape Town. Waking up between 3-6 am, it was still dark until after 7am, and sunrise was at 7.30am when I took the pictures below ('Miami Lakes' post). It really did feel like I had been awake half the night, for the first few days. So today sunset will be around 7.15pm, and I have appreciated the light evenings, reminding me of summers at home. After three months away from UK, I am really looking forward to being there over Easter, even though the weather is still very cold; they even had snow again last week.