PHILADELPHIA (AP) – If the extreme heat baking much of the country wasn’t enough of an indicator of summer’s arrival, Mother Nature will make it official later Monday when the summer solstice marks the start of the season.
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The summer solstice is when the sun reaches its highest point in the sky, providing the most daylight of the year.
The days will begin to get measurably shorter next week. If you add up the days, the total of 12 lunar phase cycles is only 354 days.
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“A full moon hasn’t landed smack on the solstice since 1948”, according to the Old Farmer’s Almanac. In the United Kingdom, the full moon and the solstice were separated by just a few hours on the morning of June 22, 1967, the dawning of what is widely called the Summer of Love. While the moon was no bigger or brighter than normal, it was a rare sight nonetheless, because full moons don’t often coincide so closely with the June solstice. “The moon won’t be visible until it rises – and it can’t right until the sun sets”, Speck says. A Strawberry Moon, very low with an amber glow, coinciding with the first day of summer is uncommon, according to experts. The strawberry moon is also known as the Hot Moon, the Honey Moon and the Rose Moon. It will be the first total solar eclipse since 1979, and the first one to cross the continent from ocean to ocean since 1918.
