December 21, 2008 - Balance Point
Welcome to the Nature Notebook.

Cultures around the world celebrated the winter solstice as a day to honor the sun. Ancient peoples from many cultures saw this day as a balance point in the struggle between dark and light, cold and warmth. The days around the winter solstice bring us the most hours of darkness, but then slowly the hours of daylight begin to increase as we move toward spring. The sun reaches its southernmost point on the horizon for a few days around the winter solstice and then begins to move north again. But warmer days don’t follow immediately. Because the earth has been cooling for a couple of months, it continues to do so until sometime in mid- to late January when temperatures begin to rebound once again as we move closer to spring and the vernal equinox when the length of day and night are equal.

This is PPL's naturalist, Jon Beam, with the Nature Notebook for WVIA.