Groundhog Day - Feb 2, 2014
Since I’m writing this the day before
Groundhog Day, I can only offer a guess as to what tomorrow will bring –
however, looking at the forecast for Ontario suggests partly cloudy, so with
that 50/50 prediction we’ll have to wait and see. Yellowknife’s forecast is
also partly cloudy, and as I’m sure there are no groundhogs to present their
spring prediction to us in the Canadian north, it won’t matter to us one way or
another. We know, without any doubt that winter will definitely continue for
the next 6 ++++ weeks.
That aside…..today’s topic is about the
sun. One of the more common discussion
points between a newcomer to the north and a permanent resident is the experience
of short days in the winter months. Often, there will be words of advice and
encouragement to deal with this lack of sunlight with the conclusive statement
that we’ll all benefit from the long summer days in 5 month’s time. Luckily, I
neither had this concern, nor have had any significant experiences of Seasonal
Affective Disorder – SAD, other than desiring some hibernation time and limited
activity outside of work, since coming here. And, well, that’s been pretty much
the norm for me anyway, to look at January as a time of retreat, rest and
recuperation. Beyond that, yes, it feels a little different when you go to work
with no sense of the approaching day, and do not see full daylight for another couple
hours, only to have it retreat again 4 hours later.
While this may be a complete no-brainer
for the rest of you, please allow me to honour my innocent discovery a couple
of weeks ago. Didn’t really notice it in
the morning but funny how when you do the same thing every day, you notice those
subtle changes in the physical environment. Four o’clock one day the sun has
set, a week later the sun is starting to set, and a few days following that
there is still a whole half hour before the sun begins its trek to the horizon.
At first I thought I’d imagined it….then it dawned on me that the increase in
daylight was significantly faster than my Ontario experience which led me to
the following information:
Yellowknife
Dec 21 -
4.5 hours of sunlight
Jan 6 – ½
hour more – 5 hours
Jan 20 –
1.5 hours more (6 hours)
Feb 2 –
7.3 hours
42 days
shows an increase of almost 3 hours of sunlight….wow!!
19.5 hours of sunlight June 21
Toronto
Dec 21 –
8.7 hours of sunlight
Jan 6 –
8.9 hours
Jan 20 –
9.3 hours
Feb 2 –
9.8 hours
42 days
shows an increase of 1.1 hours of sunlight
June 21 – 15.3 hours of sunlight
Which
brings us to the next topic: what about those 24 hour days we keep hearing
about? Is that for real? The charts that follow will help explain that concept,
and once more I was amazed by the results and even learned some new terms:
solar twilight, civil twilight, nautical twilight and astronomical twilight.
Visually we can easily see the differences between the two locations and that
Yellowknife’s twilight bands are much wider and therefore last longer in terms
of time. So while June 21 indicates 19.5 hours of sunlight, it is preceded and
proceeded by the various ‘twilights’ which accounts for the expression of a 24
hour day, which translates into daylight – not sunlight…and midnight sun (still
a twilight experience). At the end of the day…..no pun intended…..while there
is darkness that occurs in the summer, it is of shorter duration and probably
not quite as ‘dark / black’ as we might experience elsewhere…but more on that
later on in the year as I experience it to tell it…..
Attended
a community fundraiser last weekend and in talking to the couple across the
table we were asked if we’d seen the fireworks on New Year’s Eve (we hadn’t) –
quite the spectacular show, we were told. A moment passed, perhaps we said
something about fireworks which prompted the question from them, ‘you know why
we have fireworks in the winter and not the summer, don’t you?’ Negative
response from us. ‘Well, it’s pretty
hard to see the fireworks during the summer evening….or else we’d have to wait
until 2 in the morning…..
Oh yeah
– never thought about that!!......And that dear friends is also why the
northern lights don’t resume their bright appearance until September and why we
will start to lose sight of it come late spring.
Daily Hours of Daylight and Twilight - Yellowknife
The earliest
sunrise is at 3:40am on June 16 and the latest sunset is at 11:40pm
on June 25. The latest sunrise is at 10:10am on December 26 and the earliest
sunset is at 3:02pm on December 15.
Daily Hours of Daylight and Twilight - Toronto
The
number of hours during which the Sun is visible (black line), with various
degrees of daylight, twilight, and night, indicated by the color bands. From
bottom (most yellow) to top (most gray): full daylight, solar twilight (Sun is
visible but less than 6° from the horizon), civil twilight (Sun is not visible
but is less than 6° below the horizon), nautical twilight (Sun is between 6°
and 12° below the horizon), astronomical twilight (Sun is between 12° and 18°
below the horizon), and full night.
The earliest
sunrise is at 5:35am on June 13 and the latest sunset is at 9:04pm
on June 28. The latest sunrise is at 7:57am on November 3 and the earliest
sunset is at 4:40pm on December 9.
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