The Winter Solstice is here! Every year on December 21st, the earth is at its maximum tilt of 23.4°, making the northern hemisphere at its farthest point from the sun. This results in the lowest sun angle of the year with the shortest time the sun is above the horizon. Fewer hours of sunlight can result in some very chilly nights with extremely low temperatures. While we’re all staying warm and cozy near the fireplace this year on the winter solstice, let’s do a little science experiment with our data in My AcuRite!
From your mobile device or desktop computer, simply login to your My AcuRite account and click on the Charts tab. Regardless of which type of AcuRite weather station you have, as long as you’re reporting to My AcuRite through AcuRite Access™, you should be able to view a graph of your temperature data. I view my past 31 days to view monthly trends, and as you can see from the image below, my area has been trending colder throughout the month! Some low temperatures are approaching freezing!
On or after the solstice, load the data for December 21st to see how that low sun angle and fewer hours of daylight affected the low temperature. My station has been seeing the coldest temperature right before dawn, which is pretty usual unless there is an interesting front moving through to affect the normal diurnal (daily) temperature cycle.
The really cool features are in the new UV and light sensors in the Atlas station. If you have an AcuRite Atlas™ weather station, then you can scroll down to your UV and Measured Light data. As we approach the solstice, the measured light data from my Atlas has dropped significantly. While it averages 9 hours in November, this month, it has reduced to 8 hours on average, with an expected 7 hours and 30 minutes on the solstice!
Discuss and share below!
Make sure to share your coldest temperatures and hours of daylight in the comments below. And stay warm with hot cocoa by the fireplace on these long and chilly nights! Brrr!