After months of winter misery the sun is starting to have noticeable force and the temperature is climbing to around 10 degrees during the day – a little nippy, but bearable. Toronto (where I used to live), meanwhile, still has temperatures that can plunge to -12 degrees during the day.
Sadly, in terms of hours of daylight London appears to be well behind. Thanks to the US Naval Observatory I can see that this year we don’t start to get more sun than Toronto until April 23rd and we start falling behind again on August 20th. Four months of gloriously long days is little compensation for eight months of increasing darkness…
NB – daylight savings time may affect this, but I am not sure in what direction as both countries have it, and (I think) at slightly different times. Also note I am talking about hours of daylight in the evening here – the situation looks better when you count the time of sunrise as well as sunset, but I like to be asleep around sunrise!
Plunge to -12? Come on David, we hit -25 the other day (-32 with wind chill). A couple of months ago a ski lift was shut down because it reportedly hit -100 with the wind chill (my guess is it was more like -50, but hey it’s possible).
Comment by Reid — 4 March 2003 @ 5:14 pm