Daylight on the 15th: the month the Ring Road stops being sane

November. On 15 October 2027 Reykjavík has 9 hours 52 minutes between sunrise and sunset; on 15 November it has 6 hours 33 minutes. The longest day in the seven-day Ring Road ledger, Akureyri to Borgarnes, is 325 km and needs about seven hours of light with its stops. October fits it with time to spare; November does not fit it at all. That is the whole argument, and the table is the evidence.

#The table

Computed for Reykjavík (64.15° N, 21.94° W) with the NOAA solar equations, sunrise and sunset at a zenith of 90.833°, for the 15th of each month of 2027. Iceland keeps UTC all year, so these are clock times.

Two cautions. The 15th is a sample, not a month: between 15 October and 15 November the day loses three and a third hours, about six and a half minutes a day, so the end of October is already well below the October row. And the figures are for the capital. Egilsstaðir lies seven and a half degrees of longitude further east, which puts its sunrise and sunset about half an hour earlier on the clock; the length of the day is the same to within minutes. Twilight adds usable grey at each end, more in winter than you would expect at this latitude, but the ledgers do not count it and neither should a plan.

#The 330 km rule

Every driving row in the Ring Road ledgers is 330 km or less, and the rule is what that figure is for. At the ledger's 80 km/h, 330 km is 4 hours 8 minutes at the wheel. Add a fuel stop, a meal and the two or three places that are the reason for the day, at the half-hour to hour the stop pages give them, and the day is about seven hours door to door. Add a margin at each end, because leaving a guesthouse in the dark is fine and arriving at an unfamiliar one in the dark on an unfamiliar road is not, and a 330 km day wants eight hours of daylight to be ordinary and seven to be done with discipline.

Lay that on the table. April to September has more light than anyone can drive. March, with 11 h 40 min, fits any ledger day with hours over. October, 9 h 52 min, fits the longest day with two hours over, which is the margin a late start or a closed pass needs. November, 6 h 33 min, is below the line even with discipline, and December and January are below it by a working day. February, 8 h 37 min, is the surprising row: it is back above the line, which is why the season planner on this site treats late February as the first month the south coast to Höfn and back is a sane self-drive week rather than a dash.

What the rule does not say is that nobody should drive in November. It says the Ring Road ledgers, which are seven and ten days of 115 to 330 km each, are not the plan for it. The November plan on the season page is shorter days on the south coast, with Vík and Kirkjubæjarklaustur as the turning points and Höfn as the far end; 270 km from Vík to Höfn is 3 h 20 min at the wheel and fits in 6 h 33 min with the lagoon and a lunch, barely. The alternative is the north by air. Both are in the ledgers; the loop is not, and the table is why.

#Sources

• NOAA Global Monitoring Laboratory, solar calculator equations (the general solar position calculations used for the table): https://gml.noaa.gov/grad/solcalc/calcdetails.html
• Computed here for Reykjavík, 64.1466° N, 21.9426° W, for the 15th of each month of 2027, on 1 November 2026.
• Iceland season planner and the Ring Road ledgers on this site, checked 1 November 2026.