Tuesday, November 27, 2007

The Dark Time

It was 5 degrees this morning and the wind chill was 8 below zero. I think that this is the first negative wind chill for this winter season. Pretty cold.

I walked along the river in the Saintly City for about an hour a little after noon. The temp had risen to 12 degrees and there was no discernible wind. I didn't get any photos of note, so I'm going to publish without one. Instead I'm injecting some data relating to the amount of light we get this time of year. And you wonder why we're so grouchy. We are only about 4150 miles from the north pole.

Today is November 27, 2007. The length of the period of daylight at the latitude of St Paul (45 degrees north) is 9 hours and 9 minutes (9.15 hours.) That is 38.125% of a 24 hour day. The winter solstice is scheduled for Dec 22, 2007. On that day, the shortest of the year, there will be 8 hours 45 min 56 sec or 8.767 hrs of daylight. That is 36.53% of a 24 hour day and 56.13% of the daylight on the day of the summer solstice. The days don't get shorter very fast in the next three weeks, but they do get shorter.
The summer solstice was Jun 22, 2007, and on that day at this lattitude there were 15 hour 37 min 6 sec (15.617 hrs) of possible daylight (65.07% of a 24 hour day)

News of the Day: The International Tennis Federation (ITF) has officially announced that Germany's Tommy Haas was not poisoned during the Davis Cup semi-finals in September. I'm not sure why they are so sure. I think that if he had been poisoned they would have used substances that would be undetectable by current tests.

The Davis Cup final begins Friday in Portland Oregon against Russia. Andy Roddick, James Blake, and twins Bob and Mike Bryan will be competing for USA.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Single digits ... that's COLD. And you walked for an hour at 12 degrees? That is pretty hard core.

Not much sun available, and we've had less than 15% of available sun since November 4 here. But your days are a few minutes shorter than ours are. Late November is hard.