Happy Solstice!

I'm not convinced. I will reserve my judgment until tomorrow.

Tom

 

Happy solstice to all my pagan friends. Those before you have celebrated this day for millennium. Today marks the dawn of a new era. For those of you who worship the 'new' religions, the same.

 

Yes, today is the celestial day when the days begin to get longer again. Unfortunately, because of our latitude, our temps will not follow but continue to get a bit cooler for another month or so.

 

Tonight is the first night of Hanukkah too.

 

Only if you live in the Northern hemisphere. PatSparks and his fellow Aussies down in the Antipodes are celebrating their summer solstice, their longest day of the year.

How's the weather down there in Adelaide Pat?

 

Happy Solstice to all.

We had planned to go to a Solstice party in Port Townsend this weekend, but with over six inches of snow on the ground, we decided it was the better part of valor to stay home. So my wife and I exchanged gifts today.

Looking out at all this snow, I keep thinking that where I grew up is warm and sunny (and Summer Solstice) right now.

Tonight we burn the Yule log...

 

Happy Solstice, and happy holidays. Here is a winter solstice photo of the little village in which we live. Northport is hidden in the trees on the right side of the photo. In the distance is Grand Traverse Bay, which is a bay on Lake Michigan and is about 12 miles wide and 35 miles long. You can't see it due to the heavy snow. I should note that I risked frost bite snowshoeing up to the top of this hill today, just to get this photo for you PriusChatters. The photo was taken at around 3:00 PM today (the solstice). Feel free to pull it down from my server if you want it in full size.

Tom

 

What was the outside temperature when you took that photo Tom? It certainly is a wintery scene! Even more so when viewed at full res ... you can see the individual snowflakes falling!

 

Our Yule decor. The log thing has tea lights, which were lit:


We had "candles" going throughout the night, until this morning when the Sun was again born to nourish and warm the world (okay, they were battery tea lights, but I'm not risking a fire while I sleep).

 

We had a bit of a heat wave today. It was all the way up to around 20°F, although the wind was and is blowing around 25 mph with justs to 35 mph. The exposure on the top of the hill made the wind chill kind of nasty. We should be getting another half foot of snow tonight.

The photo is actually four photos stitched together. At the base of the hill is our local ice skating rink.

Tom

 

Or so thought the Druids and the Pagans back in the days of yore, when they decided it would be a good idea to track the phenomenon. So they built Stonehenge.

 

You don't have to be a Druid or a Pagan to appreciate the Solstice. It's just a fact of nature, and worth a little celebration!

Regarding Christmas, I think the early Christians saw that a lot of people celebrated around the solstice, so in a bold marketing move they planned their holiday for the same time. "You might as well convert... I mean you don't even have to change your solstice celebration all that much... in fact, we'll even let you keep the whole festival-of-light nonsense."

I wouldn't say our darkest days are over though. I'm looking to a date next month for that...

 

Hey it's hot and sunny here for the Summer Solstice! The day is very long, sun rise at 5:59am and setting at 8:29PM. Further south and the days are even longer right up to 24 hours at the south pole although not quite as warm.
Officially the days stay the same length for the next few days although sun rise and set are a minute later tomorrow. The days start getting shorter according to official sun rise sun set times on 27 December 2008 by 1 minute. These are gazetted times.

Hyo,
I can't claim to be an expert on the seasons in the Northern Hemisphere but down here in the deep south the first day of summer is the 1st of December with summer drawing to a close officially on 30th of February.
I would have assumed your winter officially kicks in on 1st of December much like our summer.

 

No, we mark our seasons by the equinox and solstice.

Tom

 

Sunday was a very comfortable 25°C in Sydney (for us, it is now the middle of Monday) - blue skys, plenty of sunshine. Would be nice if it stayed like that for all summer. We have had one very warm day, 33°C, so far this summer (our summer starts on Dec 1), and the prediction is that there is more to come.

We don't get the extremes that Pat does - earlier this year they set a record for the number of consecutive days in the 35°C+ - but then we get the humidity.

Current predictions for this week in Sydney are between 23°C and 29°C, average humidity, a little rain and a high UV warning. Nice comfortable weather.

 

35 is good as long as it's dry with a breeze, 37 to 40 and it's too bloody hot!!

 

I opened this thread thinking someone got a Pontiac Solstice and I have to read this crap?

It's been getting cold here though, on my way home Friday night it was probably the coldest my Prius has shown at 43 degrees. Today was up in the 60-65F range. The sunset tonight was at 4:46PM. Currently 47 degrees F, 89% humidity, no wind, visibility 6 miles.

Tomorrow's stats are 59/47 sunrise 6:48AM, sunset 4:47PM. 40% chance of precip.

According to TWC our coldest night is going to be December 26 with a low of 40:focus:

 

Yes, Tom is right, although as a Brit by birth and American by choice I have always had arguments with my American-born wife over the date for the start of winter. In England we always considered winter to begin on December 1, although I really don't know why, other than the fact that it is already cold and sometimes snowy by then. The solstice and equinox dates do however make rational sense for seasonal start dates.

Then of course there is Southern California, where the turn of the seasons is usually marked by natural disasters, such as brush fires, mudslides, etc.!

 

Well today was officially our first day of winter, even though we have already had 70 inches of snow. I think our official seasons are out of sync with nature's calendar.

Tom