Winter Solstice

The winter solstice arrived today at 12:47PM, meaning that this day has shortest amount of daylight for the entire year. From now on out the amount of daylight is going to increase in the Northern Hemisphere. My friends in the Southern Hemisphere are celebrating the Summer Solstice, which marks the longest day of the year. Day length decreases until June 21st when it starts getting longer again.

Kenya doesn't experience this difference in daylight because the equator passes right through this country. When we were there for the Fall Equinox, September 2008 Safari, but the locals didn't even know what we were talking about. In Nairobi the difference in daylight between between winter and summer is only 9 minutes! Dawn and dusk last about 25 minutes each unlike Finland where it seems like the sun never goes beginning in May. But in winter Helsinki only has about 5 hours of daylight. In Lappland it's measured in minutes!

I have been in Australia in our winter (their summer), Finland in both winter and summer and Kenya in September. After a while you just learn to go to sleep when it is dark and wake up when it is light. That's a bit of a problem in Finland so you have to use the black out curtains. Now that I am home in Virginia I am really excited because the days are going to get longer from here out and that means Spring is coming!