Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: SUNDAY, January 1, 1995                   TAG: 9501030083
SECTION: CURRENT                    PAGE: NRV2   EDITION: HOLIDAY 
SOURCE: STEVE KARK
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

IT'S A NEW YEAR? THEN SPRING CAN'T COME TOO SOON|

You've dragged your warmest coat from the closet. The wood pile is freshly stocked. And even though winter officially began only a couple weeks back, you're already anticipating the first signs of spring.

Well, they aren't as far off as you might think.

Step outside this evening and watch the sun set. I know it's cold and you're warm and cozy inside, but do it anyway. The sign you're looking for is already there in the early evening sky.

Make a mental note of where the sun dips below the western horizon. Do the same thing after a week has passed, and you should find that it sets in a different place, just a tad to the right of where it set the week before.

What you'll see is the result of the earliest and, perhaps, the most significant sign of spring: the winter solstice. Having spanned its southernmost path across the sky, the sun has begun its gradual return to its highest, summertime path, bringing with it longer and sunnier days.

Surely one of nature's cruelest ironies, the winter solstice marks both the first day of winter and the beginning of seasonal changes that inevitably lead to the warmer days of spring and summer. Depending on your point of view, the glass is either half full or half empty.

The difference is determined by the amount of sunlight in each day. Up until the winter solstice, which this year fell on Dec. 22, the days had been getting shorter. Afterward, they have grown longer. Or, put another way, the amount of warming sunshine diminishes before the solstice and increases after.

New River Valley gardeners know that the path the sun takes across the sky has been slowly creeping toward the southern horizon since the summer solstice in June.

Moreover, everyone knows that the sun is hottest when it is directly overhead. So it stands to reason that when the sun's path is lower in the sky, the temperature will be lower. And that when the path begins to climb higher again, as it did on the solstice, temperatures should begin to rise as well.

But that isn't exactly the way it works out.

Imagine, if you will, that the Earth works like a big wood stove. When you start a hot fire in the wood stove, it takes a while before it begins to warm the house. Also, hours after a good, hot fire has burned out, the wood stove continues to warm because the firebrick inside the stove has retained the heat.

The Earth retains heat in much the same way. Although there's increasingly more warming sunshine in our January and February skies, it takes six to eight weeks before we begin to notice warmer days.

Similarly, when the sun begins to head south again on the summer solstice in June, the "stored" heat warms us during those hot, summer days.

Nature changes seasons hardly as abruptly as the dates on our calendars might lead us to believe. Instead, the changes come gradually. There's little bits of spring spread throughout the coldest winter.

Knowing this may not warm your house in the weeks to come, but it might warm your spirit just a bit. After all, it'll be weeks before the coltsfoot begins to poke up through a late snow.

Anything helps.