Community Corner

What is Winter Solstice and When Does it Start?

by Alex Gronke and Brad Kava

One doesn’t have to be a druid or belong to a coven to want to celebrate the longest night of the year.

The winter solstice, which is Saturday, marks the point in Earth’s orbit when the North Pole tilts furthest from the sun. It’s when the sun appears to stop moving south and begin moving north. The word "solstice" comes from combining the Latin words for sun (sol) and stop (stit).

In Santa Cruz, this means the sun will rise at 7:18 a.m. and set at 4:55 p.m. offering us 572 minutes of its shiny self, or 9 hours and 37 minutes compared to 887 minutes, or 14.7 hours on the longest day of the year.

The actual solstice is at 9:11 a.m. in Santa Cruz. That means the North Pole is tipped about 23 degrees away from the sun, according to Mashable.com. When summer rolls around, the South Pole is tipped 23 degrees away from the sun. During the vernal and autumnal equinoxes, the Earth is not tilted in either direction. 

This article from Space.com offers a more complete explanation of the astronomy behind the solstice, but the various winter solstice events in the Bay Area take their inspiration from the prescientific era of human history.

Last year, people were worried that the world was ending because the Mayan calendar had run out of days. Reason to celebrate now, indeed. 

Find out what's happening in Santa Cruzwith free, real-time updates from Patch.

Meteorologists consider Dec. 1 the start of winter, according to this article in Mashable.  It's been so cold in the Cruz, you'd get laughed at if you called this December, fall.


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