— You might notice darkened skies behind Debra Morgan, Renee Chou and Jeff Gravely as they report live from the Olympics in Rio de Janeiro even during the 5 p.m. and 6 p.m. newscasts.

Rio is in the Brasília Time Zone which is currently one hour ahead of Raleigh in the Eastern Daylight Time Zone, but that’s just part of the reason.

Brazil is in the southern hemisphere where it is currently winter. While that’s not bringing Winter Olympics weather to Rio, it does bring earlier sunsets and fewer hours of daylight.

The sun shines on Rio from about 6:23 a.m. to 5:34 pm. local time for a total of 11 hours, 11 minutes with another minute of sunlight added each day. Here in Raleigh the sun rises around the same local time but sunset is nearly three hours later. We loose nearly two minutes of sunlight each day, a process that began with the solstice in late June.

Tune into the games around 4:30 p.m. and you might catch a nice Brazilian sunset in high definition. You’ll get another chance to see a beautiful sunset around 8:14 p.m. in even higher definition right outside your front door.