'Tis Spring... erh, really.
So, it's Spring.
Well, according to the Vernal Equinox anyway. The wha? Equi-wha? you say?
Here's an excerpt from a New York Times Science page article today:
Our clocks may have already “sprung forward” in a dubious attempt at energy conservation, but please, let’s not lose track of the far weightier astronomical event that ushers in spring proper — even when the event has trouble keeping track of itself.
A couple of weeks ago, I checked a wall calendar and noted that this year the vernal equinox falls on Tuesday, March 20, happily the publication date of this column. Not long afterward, however, my eye chanced upon another calendrical reference to the equinox — March 21.
I quickly consulted every one of my household’s 13 calendars: 6 put the equinox on March 20, 6 on March 21. As for the potential tie-breaker, my daughter’s “Star Trek” calendar, it had nothing to say about a geo-fixated occasion like the equinox, though it did point out that March 22 is the birthday of William “Captain Kirk” Shatner.
Now, we’re all accustomed to the general shiftiness of the four seasons, and the fact that their start dates in the third week of March, June, September and December may move a day or two from one year to the next. This is to be expected from our attempts to synchronize our rigid annual schedules with the gravitational nuances of Earth’s transit around the Sun.
But as I soon discovered in my attempt to resolve the calendar crisis, the vernal equinox in 2007 has the added snag of arriving at the querulous hour of just seven minutes past midnight, universal time, on March 21. Coordinated Universal Time is what used to be called Greenwich Mean Time, but the new name doesn’t make it any more universal than it ever was, and it remains a time zone centered in Britain. For those of us in the United States, the vernal equinox arrives while it is still the evening of March 20."
So there it is. As of the evening of March 20. It's Spring. And PS; if you think I'm some astrology whizz, think again, I was only prompted to think about Spring when I heard the DJ go on and on about it on the local station while I was driving - ahem, and get this, it's actually called... Kroc 106.3. And you thought the stations back home had cheesy names??
(PS: our fav station here in MN is Cities 97. Go have a listen if you're free - er, preferably in the daytime here, just minus 13 hours from Sg time)
And back to the topic at hand, well, the weather seems to be obeying the rules somewhat this time: It's -2 deg C out now, but in two days, the highs will reach a whopping 12 deg C. Everyone say it with me... "whaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa".
heh.
Well, according to the Vernal Equinox anyway. The wha? Equi-wha? you say?
Here's an excerpt from a New York Times Science page article today:
Our clocks may have already “sprung forward” in a dubious attempt at energy conservation, but please, let’s not lose track of the far weightier astronomical event that ushers in spring proper — even when the event has trouble keeping track of itself.
A couple of weeks ago, I checked a wall calendar and noted that this year the vernal equinox falls on Tuesday, March 20, happily the publication date of this column. Not long afterward, however, my eye chanced upon another calendrical reference to the equinox — March 21.
I quickly consulted every one of my household’s 13 calendars: 6 put the equinox on March 20, 6 on March 21. As for the potential tie-breaker, my daughter’s “Star Trek” calendar, it had nothing to say about a geo-fixated occasion like the equinox, though it did point out that March 22 is the birthday of William “Captain Kirk” Shatner.
Now, we’re all accustomed to the general shiftiness of the four seasons, and the fact that their start dates in the third week of March, June, September and December may move a day or two from one year to the next. This is to be expected from our attempts to synchronize our rigid annual schedules with the gravitational nuances of Earth’s transit around the Sun.
But as I soon discovered in my attempt to resolve the calendar crisis, the vernal equinox in 2007 has the added snag of arriving at the querulous hour of just seven minutes past midnight, universal time, on March 21. Coordinated Universal Time is what used to be called Greenwich Mean Time, but the new name doesn’t make it any more universal than it ever was, and it remains a time zone centered in Britain. For those of us in the United States, the vernal equinox arrives while it is still the evening of March 20."
So there it is. As of the evening of March 20. It's Spring. And PS; if you think I'm some astrology whizz, think again, I was only prompted to think about Spring when I heard the DJ go on and on about it on the local station while I was driving - ahem, and get this, it's actually called... Kroc 106.3. And you thought the stations back home had cheesy names??
(PS: our fav station here in MN is Cities 97. Go have a listen if you're free - er, preferably in the daytime here, just minus 13 hours from Sg time)
And back to the topic at hand, well, the weather seems to be obeying the rules somewhat this time: It's -2 deg C out now, but in two days, the highs will reach a whopping 12 deg C. Everyone say it with me... "whaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa".
heh.
