Storm Team 4; Now Let Us All Welcome Spring

Summary

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The end of the winter of 2004-'05 is official at 6:33 this morning, a time in the earth's orbit around the sun called the vernal or spring equinox. At that exact moment the vertical rays of the sun pass over the Earth's equator heading north to finally stop at the Tropic of Cancer at the summer solstice in late June. Spring is deemed official today according to astronomers, regardless of the weather at your location. A wise man once said the first day of spring is one thing, but the first spring day is another. The difference between them is sometimes as long as a month!

The word equinox comes from the Latin and means "equal night." On this date day and night are theoretically equal, with 12 hours of daylight and 12 hours of night. Actually, the folks at Sky and Telescope magazine tell me that isn't exactly true for a couple of reasons. First, sunrise and sunset are defined as when the sun's top edge, not its center, crosses the horizon. Second, the Earth's atmosphere distorts the sun's apparent position slightly when the sun is very low, so accurate times may be off by a couple of minutes.

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Storm Team 4; Now Let Us All Welcome Spring

The equinoxes in March and Septe...

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