Unofficially, Salisbury dipped to 13° this morning, breaking the old record of 17° from 1980. Wallops Island & Georgetown didn't quite break their records this morning.
Today is also a special day because it's leap day! Some cool stuff is happening. The Association of Zoos and Aquariums have deemed 2008 the year of the frog to bring awareness to amphibian conservation. The National Aquarium in Baltimore has all sorts of stuff going on this weekend, like frog calling and leaping skills. But how about some free food?! If you're a leap year baby, Papa Johns is giving away a free large one-topping Perfect Pan pizza. McDonalds is also giving away free McSkillet burritos with the purchase of a medium/large drink (even if you're not a leap year baby!)
But, do you know why we have leap years? I talked about in yesterday's Weather Matters segment. Here's why...
The actual length of a year is longer than 365 days, it's actually 365.242 days. It takes the Earth 365 days and 6 hours to circle the sun. Leap years occur every 4 years. And once you do some math, 6 hours multiplied by 4 years equals 24 hours or one day; hence why we need a leap day - February 29th. So you can think of leap year as a correction factor, correcting the time it takes Earth to make one revolution.
But why go through such complication?? Basically to keep the calendar consistent with earth's journey around the sun. The goal is to keep the vernal equinox on or close to March 21, so that Easter remains close to the vernal equinox. By the way, an equinox is when the center of the Sun is directly above the Earth's equator. Day and night will be nearly the same length. Have a great leap day!
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment