Moving into the Sunshine

Joanna here, feeling like I should be doing something to encourage the sun a bit more.

It always strikes me as weird that the days get longer after the Solstice in December but the weather keeps getting colder. My truly cold winter months hit in January and February when there's more sun. It seems both unfair and, like, counter intuitive.

It's sciency stuff, basically. The "getting slowly colder" thing happens because the earth is a big place and holds a whole bunch of accumulated heat energy stored up from last July and August. Takes a while for that heat to dissipate.

Same reason you can't just take yer pie out of the oven and it's instantly cool enough to chow down.

see the similarity to the earth on the right

If the pie were the earth and you took it out on the Solstice, round here you wouldn't be eating dessert till January.

Here's a nifty map of the coldest day for the US. (you can look at it up close here.) You'll see that some places -- like in Colorado -- get chillyfreezing at the Solstice. This is arranged by the local Chamber of Commerce to encourage Ski Tourism over Winter Break. Where I live, deepest cold hits in the middle of February and we are still worried about blossom damage on the fruit trees into March and April.

So the whole "inertia of the earth's heat" is all very well, but it doesn't account for what actually happens, does it?

When you ask why, they come up with a lot of meteorological hand-waving basically. They talk about humidity and local climate and how close you are to the ocean and I suppose computers are involved somewhere. It still does not seem fair and I find the Chamber of Commerce argument more convincing, meself.

This is a fox in Norway who really cannot wit for the days to get longer

In case you were wondering How Much Longer your days are going to get now that the Winter Solstice has come and gone, you can go here, plug in your city, and you will be able to find out.

Here in Virginia I get an extra minute of daylight tomorrow. Yippee! I'll continue to get an extra minute of sun every day till the Summer Solstice. I feel so special.

Folks living in Nome, Alaska will get close to two extra minutes tomorrow, but I do not begrudge it to them.

 

Are you looking forward to getting some sun eventually? What do you plan to do with it?