RSS SPIRIT

The Sun Arrives For 6 Months At Our House




Those of us lucky to live in the northern hemisphere have picked up over 2/3 of an hour of daylight in these last two weeks. Blame it on the vernal equinox, that moment on March 20/21 the sun leaves the southern hemisphere for a six month journey around the top part of our globe.

But why 47 minutes in the last two weeks? How is that possible? The easiest way to conceive of this is to picture two people on a see saw. The sun is behind a fence so that most of the time only one of the see-sawers is getting sun. Every equinox (march and september) the see saw flips for six months. Over these last two weeks we have flipped, and the south siders get a lot less sun, and the north siders rise up over the fence line to enjoy the full on sunshine.

That of course is a simplistic analogy. For weather geeks the answer requires formulas for elliptical, circular and angular movement. But one needs no formula in the northern hemisphere to enjoy almost an hour more light a day. As many in these climes have noticed, it gets awfully dark around here in the winter. So when the sun sees fit to return and dump a little more of its ever loving rays down on us dry and wintry loiterers, we rejoice.

And call it spring.

###