by CKR
This is one of my favorite days of the year. From here on, the days get longer.
I wanted to note exactly where the sun rises over the mountains, the furthest south it will go, but there were a few clouds left from yesterday's snowstorm, not as massive here as in Denver, but I'll have to get the snowblower out later. I've got a little electric snowblower, not as macho as the big gasoline ones, but I don't have to deal with gasoline starting on cold mornings. In this one sense of fortunately, the thermometer under my front portal says that it's 15 degrees, even though the television reported 32. If the snow isn't cold enough, it clogs the snowblower. Looks like I can write a post or two before getting out into the wind that is shaking the snow off the juniper outside my window. Maybe I'll be able to add a photo to this post later.
The Midwinter celebrations come a few days later, because if you're actually observing where the sun rises, it's hard to be sure it's turned around until a few days pass. We now have television weather people to tell us that "winter will arrive" at exactly 7:22 this evening, Eastern Standard Time. That means that the axis of the earth's rotation will be lined up with the sun, the north pole pointing the most away from the sun at that time. I prefer going by the shortness of the day, or the length of the night.
But it is the first day of winter, and, even though the days get longer, there's a good reason for that. We can, of course, expect cold into March at least, and scattered snow in this part of the world until the end of May. In the days before supermarkets, most people who died from the winter's depredations did so in March, when the stored food was running out.
So we've got some bad weather ahead, but more sunshine.