Temperatures are rising, the days are getting longer, but when is summer arriving in the US and the Northern Hemisphere in general?
In 2014, spring will make way for summer with the summer solstice on June 21.
The solstice — a period when the Sun reaches its highest point in the sky at noon — will occur at 6:51 a.m. EDT, 5:51 a.m. CDT, 4:51 a.m. MDT and 3:51 a.m. PDT this year.
The summer solstice is the day with the most hours of sunlight during the year. This also means that June 21 will see the longest day and shortest night of the year.
Just because June 21 is the longest day of 2014 doesn’t mean that we will see the earliest sunrise and the latest sunset on that day.
As a general rule of thumb, the earliest sunrise occurs before the summer solstice, and the latest sunset after.
This year, the earliest sunrise should fall on June 14. The latest sunset should occur on June 27.
Here are some summer folklore sayings, quotes, and verse:
One swallow never made a summer.
Deep snow in winter, tall grain in summer. –Estonian proverb
When the summer birds take their flight, goes the summer with them.
A perfect summer day is when the sun is shining, the breeze is blowing, the birds are singing, and the lawn mower is broken. -James Dent
To see the Summer Sky
Is Poetry, though never in a Book it lie -
True Poems flee.
-Emily Dickinson
In the depth of winter, I finally learned that within me there lay an invincible summer. -Albert Camus
In summer, the song sings itself. -William Carlos Williams
Green was the silence, wet was the light,
the month of June trembled like a butterfly....
-Pablo Neruda
A man says a lot of things in summer he doesn’t mean in winter. -Patricia Briggs
*Summer via Shutterstock
