Winter Solstice
This morning, December 21, 2021, at 10:59 CST, was the exact moment when a hemisphere is tilted as far away from the Sun as it can be — the Winter Solstice.
This is the day with the fewest hours of sunlight in the whole year, making it the “shortest day” of the year. It marks the official beginning of winter.
Think of it this way: Although the winter solstice means the start of winter, it also means the return of more sunlight.
It only gets brighter from here!
Newgrange
Around 3200 B.C., ancient people in Ireland built a huge mound of dirt and surrounded it with stones. Today, the knoll is called Newgrange.
For five days around the winter solstice, a beam of sunlight illuminates a small room inside the mound for 17 minutes at dawn. The room holds only twenty people at a time.
Every year, thousands enter a lottery in hope of being one of the hundred people allowed to enter.
"Season of Shivers"
Brrr! The 2022 Old Farmer’s Almanac comes with a winter warning: Prepare for a “Season of Shivers.” This winter will be punctuated by positively bone-chilling, below-average temperatures across most of the United States.
“This coming winter could well be one of the longest and coldest that we’ve seen in years,” says Janice Stillman, editor of The Old Farmer’s Almanac. For 230 years, the Almanac has been helping readers to prepare for winter’s worst with its 80 percent–accurate weather forecasts.
Bundle Up !!