May Day
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Many folk and pagan festivals are tied to the great cycles of life and sun. May Day is one of them. Celebrated for thousands of years by many cultures, May Day could be the most ancient festival still observed in the Northern Hemisphere. Hi. I'm Dave Thurlow for The Weather Notebook.

In old Celtic England, young men and maidens would celebrate the coming of May by going a-Maying." After spending the night in the forests, they returned at daybreak to adorn villages with spring boughs and blossoms. Their May Day festival celebrated Earth's new fertility under the increased sunlight so noticeable at this junction between the vernal equinox and summer solstice. May Day marks one of four annual "cross-quarter" days that we no longer celebrate with the energy that our ancestors did. The media fusses about the first days of the seasons as defined by the equinoxes and solstices, but these days are actually the mid-season days in the solar calendar.

Although May Day comes during what we consider the Spring, it actually marks the start of Solar Summer, the quarter of the year with the strongest sunlight and the longest days north of the Tropic of Capricorn. The solar cycle calendar followed by the old agrarian communities of Europe sets May Day as the approximate time for planting of crops and vegetable gardens. The longer daylight hours during solar summer allowed folks to take full advantage of the natural light for both work and play.

By May Day, most trees are in full leaf, many Spring flowers are in bloom and the Earth is brimming with both plant and animal life taking advantage of the high sun and increasingly warmer temperatures. But then, I probably didn't need to tell you that!.

Thanks today to contributing writer, Keith Heidorn of Victoria, British Columbia. The Weather Notebook is a production of the Mount Washington Observatory. It is supported by Subaru of America.