December 22 is the first day of winter for all the folks in the Northern Hemisphere! The sun is the furthest away from the equator, shining directly over the Tropic of Capricorn (Alice Springs, Australia and Sao Paulo, Brazil are just a couple of cities along the Tropic of Capricorn.) The first day of winter is the shortest day of the year (meaning it gets dark pretty darn early)!

More interesting winter-related info:

Antarctica is the coldest place on earth (kind of a no-brainer here) with the coldest reported temperature being -89.4 C (or) -129 F.

The coldest place in North America: Snag, the Yukon Territory of Canada with a recorded temperature of -81.4 F on February 3, 1947.

Living on the East Coast of America? The 2008 weather forecast from The Farmer’s Almanac predicts a very cold and snowy winter.

Living out West? Your winter is expected to be mild.

Snowflakes are really ice crystals in various patterns.

According to the International Commission on Snow and Ice (seriously), snowflakes have these general forms:

1. Plates
2. Stellar crystals
3. Columns
4. Needles
5. Spatial dendrites
6. Capped columns
7. Irregular forms

Some snowflake researchers use 35 shapes.

The world’s largest snowflake was 38 cm wide and 20cm thick and was found at Fort Keogh, Montana on January 28, 1887.

The most snowfall within 24 hours in the U.S. was 63 inches and occurred in Georgetown, Colorado on December 4, 1913.

Folklore, err weatherlore:

The first frost in autumn will be exactly six months after the first thunderstorm of spring.

As many days old as is the moon on the first snow, there will be that many snowfalls by crop planting time.

We'll have a cold winter if:

• Animals have thicker coats of hair or fur.
• Squirrels build their nests low in trees and gather nuts early.
• Ants build their mounds high.
• Larger numbers of spiders are seen in the fall.
• A heavy crop of berries are found on holly and dogwood trees.
• Birds are seen migrating early or huddling on the ground.
• Woolly worms have heavy coats and they have a wide black band

 

A different perspective:

Sunshine is delicious, rain is refreshing, wind braces up, snow is exhilarating; there is no such thing as bad weather, just different kinds of good weather.
~ John Ruskin

Finally, always remember...

The trouble with weather forecasting is that it's right too often
for us to ignore it and wrong too often for us to rely on it.
~ Patrick Young

 

Photo credit: jodocusd

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