Wednesday, April 6, 2011

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, 2011RiseSet
Actual Time5:02 AM ADT8:12 PM ADT
Civil Twilight3:48 AM ADT9:27 PM ADT
Nautical Twilight1:25 AM ADT12:13 AM ADT
Astronomical TwilightSun does not riseSun does not rise
MoonNo Moon RiseNo Moon Set
Length Of Visible Light17h 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...