Posted December 19, 2009, 4:37 PM.

But not by much.

The time between sunrise and sunset on Monday is 9 hours, 56 minutes and 4 seconds on Monday in inland valley communities.

That is four seconds shorter than Sunday, and one second shorter than Tuesday.

Sunrises, however, will continue to get later through January 7th. Sunsets have already reached their earliest time of the year, on December 8th, and are even now getting slowly later. The reasons for this are rooted in the earth's tilt on its axis and its elliptical orbit around the sun.

Daylight time won't begin increasing much until the middle of January or so.