Winter is Here

Stay Warm and Dry

VIDEO

Skippy Massey
Humboldt Sentinel

“Never cut a tree down in the wintertime. Never make a negative decision in the low time. Never make your most important decisions when you are in your worst mood. Never speak ill of others when the sun is short.

Wait. Be patient. The darkness of winter will pass. The spring will come.”

~Robert H Schuller

Winter is here.

We love winter. The bugs are dead, and the people are indoors. Unless they’re out skating.

Today is the winter solstice of 2014, meaning the time between sunrise and sunset is less than on any other day of the year. It will be the shortest, darkest day of the year.

Officially speaking, winter begins tonight at 6:03 p.m. ET– the moment when the Northern Hemisphere is pointed at its furthest distance from the sun.

This means the winter solstice brings the longest night and the shortest day, and often colder temperatures, too.

The winter solstice begins when the sun is directly over the Tropic of Capricorn; it will stay there for 3 days as the ‘sun stands still’ before it begins its journey back North for the year. It occurs at approximately the same time every year: usually on December 21, but sometimes taking place on December 22 instead– as it will in 2015.

Once darkness sets in this late afternoon, those of us in Humboldt will have been exposed to a total of 9 hours and 15 minutes of sunlight.

Meanwhile, those in Australia and the rest of the Southern Hemisphere experience the exact opposite– for them it’s summer right now. Even as we speak, the well-off rich snowbirds of the north are heading there to enjoy exotic umbrella drinks, tender massages, Bermuda shorts and a milder clime as beautiful people often do.

The rest of us stay put and eke it out, pasty-faced and chattering in cold winter garb.

Despite the longer days we’re looking forward to from now until December of next year, the mornings will continue to get darker into early January. That’s because the added period of light will be tacked on to the end of the day, rather than the beginning.

Today is about as short as its going to get, though. The days get longer and warmer from here, until we hit the summer solstice on June 21, 2015.

The good news is the California drought is over– at least as far as Humboldt County is concerned. We’ve had nearly 30” of rain, more or less, for the season to date; that’s up from 30% for this time last year. The creeks and rivers are flowing fast, the ponds and gullies are filled to the brim, and everything is overflowing wherever it can go and as fast as it can go.

We like these cold, gray, wet winter days. A stark contrast to spring, days like these let you truly savor a bad mood.