Nothing from me today. Apologies if you were looking forward to the shining wit that you’re used to me providing you with.
First proper day of summer, see?
Things need done.
Tag: summer
Autumn is coming…
Uh-oh.
This shouldn’t really come as any sort of surprise to people around here. This happened last year at this time, if I recall correctly. And possibly also once before – was it 2011 maybe? Anyway, I digress. The combination of the time of year and a stiff overnight breeze resulted in a veritable plethora of leaves all over the floor. A sure sign from Mother Nature that it’s been hot and sunny for long enough.
It doesn’t mean that summer is quite over – we still have a couple of days this week which are going to hit 30ºC – but the nights are getting noticeably cooler and the mornings noticeably darker. I know you’ve noticed it too.
I don’t want to call it just yet, but it’s coming.
Be ready Cape Town, because summer is almost over.
Almost.
And how’s your day?
It remains a bit weird to me – as a Northern Hemispherean – that this is December.
Still, I’m not complaining.
Summer *is* coming
We’ve had a long winter and I’ve had a hellishly busy couple of weeks. But things are slowly returning to normal Chez 6000 and, after a couple of dry days, I’m fairly confident that we’ve turned the corner season-wise as well.
Thus, I’ve started preparing the back garden for the pool parties that will inevitably take place here during the summer months. And, having done that preparation, I (somewhat implausibly) invited some American college students around to test things out.
Here is footage of their efforts:
It’s all looking good for a long, hot summer, although I think Mrs 6000 may insist on the kids wearing some sort of safety gear.
Sunset won’t get any earlier
We’re in the grips of midwinter here in Cape Town. It’s hell. Almost, anyway.
But the good news is that the shortening of the days is almost over and we are nearly able to look forward to SUMMER!
This week, the sun has been setting at 17:44, but despite the fact that the shortest day (our winter solstice this year is at 07:04 on Friday, 21 June) is actually still a couple of weeks away, the sunset won’t be getting any earlier now, 17:44 is the earliest it’s going to get this year.
The time of sunset in most major cities around the world used to be calculated by astronomers using complicated algorithms, but for Cape Town these days, a guy in a white coat just pops down to Green Point Promenade and counts the number of Instagrammers, before calling the results back in to HQ.
Because of the tilt of the earth on its axis, the sunrise does continue to get a little later until the end of the month, but by that time we’ve already gained another 4 minutes of light in the evening, so I think that we can basically say that summer is pretty much already here.
Some few facts for you:
Cape Town’s shortest day this year is 21st June, with 9h 53m 35s of daylight.
The longest day will be the 21st December, when the sun will rise at 05:32 and set at 19:57, giving us 14h 25m 03s of daylight. If you really think that you can do a lot more with those 4½ hours of light, you might want to consider using artificial light sources to lengthen the useful time each day during winter.
However, the latest sunset next summer will be on the 3rd January 2014, at 20:01. On this day, the sun will be “just” 147,098,000 km from Cape Town, compared with 152,094,000 km on 5th July 2013.
That’s a difference of about 5 million km. Wow. No wonder it gets warmer.
Data from here.