Spring is in the Air

Things have definitely brightened up with the return of the sun and theres a feeling of spring in the air. We had a lovely week in the -teens. Although this still sounds terribly cold, the sun has great strength and the numbers are very deceiving. Two weeks ago we had our

First BBQ of the year on Friday March 25th!

Our sun is rising at 5 am and setting around 8 pm although there is still quite a bit of light in the sky as we have both Civil and Nautical twilight at dusk and dawn. I had to copy and paste this little table I found, just to give an idea at how quickly the 24hour sun creeps up:

Astronomy

Apr. 08, 2011	Rise	Set
Actual Time	5:02 AM ADT	8:12 PM ADT
Civil Twilight	3:48 AM ADT	9:27 PM ADT
Nautical Twilight	1:25 AM ADT	12:13 AM ADT
Astronomical Twilight	Sun does not rise	Sun does not rise
Moon	No Moon Rise	No Moon Set
Length Of Visible Light	17h 39m
Length of Day	15h 09m Tomorrow will be 9m 25s longer.

Occasionally we have "Ice Crystals" as the local weather condition which is essentially frozen fog. Along with this, we sometimes see a Sun Halo. The ice crystals in the air act like prisms to make this halo around the sun. The fog was lifting just as I got the camera out...

I'll be heading out on the land this coming Monday with my students (weather permitting) so will hopefully have some nice photos to blog about then...