We are getting more and more minutes of sunlight.

image from pixabay.com 

Sun is out with a clear, blue sky.  I looked at the app and they said cloudy.  Wonder if the clouds will move it?  We have snow covers, so it looks like winter, which is ok because it is still Feb. in Iowa. 8F(-13C)  high today of 22F(-5C)  now we are having below average temperatures.  But it must average out for the month when we had such above normal temperatures, we knew this would happen.  Stay warm, stay safe.
 
Australia family and friends Feb 22 Sunday will have 84F(29C) and looks like rain as predicted 95% chance.  Hope they do, as Evelyn says they are very dry. Stay cool, stay dry, stay safe.
 
I am noticing that we are getting more sunlight.  Especially at night, sun setting later, and later. This is good meaning spring is coming, more warmth is coming, and this winter weather will be over.    Here is some information about the amount of time added each day.  Not much but you know it counts up to more time. 
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After the Shortest Day of the Year, Get Ready for Sunlight!  Written By: Bob Berman
The 2025 winter solstice occurred on Sunday, December 21, at 10:03 a.m. Yes, this is the shortest day of the year, but let’s talk about how many minutes each day the daylight increases afterward.
What Happens on the Winter Solstice?
Here are the most tangible factors affecting your everyday life. 
The real news is that we will have the fewest minutes of daylight in 2025. On the solstice in December, those of us in the Northern Hemisphere have our shortest day and our longest night.
Starting Monday, December 22, the days will start getting longer, and the Sun will be slightly higher up in the sky.  We’ll start feeling greater warmth on our skin, too! Solar intensity depends on the Sun’s height. But since the ground and the air take a while to catch up.
As for things you can easily observe, the most obvious solstitial effect is that you can look out your most southwest-facing window on Saturday and again on Sunday and see the Sun set at its leftmost position of the year. If you’re an early riser and see the Sun come up at around 7:15 AM, that will happen at its rightmost possible spot, in the east/southeast.
How Much Does Daylight Increase?
The psychologically optimistic part of all this is that starting on the solstice, we stop losing daily sunlight, which has been going on since June, and instead finally start to increase it!
This gain will be minuscule at first, just a matter of seconds a day, but will steadily grow until daily daylight expands by 3 minutes per day in March. The exact amount of brightness gain depends on your location.
During my (the author) annual Aurora odyssey in Alaska, which has brought me there each winter for the past 30 years, we’ve noticed the March daylight expansion to be an amazing 7 minutes per day. That adds up to almost a full hour of extra daily sunshine each and every week! It’s so abrupt that it alters sleeping patterns, party times, taking afternoon strolls instead of skipping them, and so on.
But in most of the lower 48 states, the extra daily sunshine in March is closer to 20 minutes after each week, the most the majority of us ever experience, like a slowly opened gift package.
Let’s take a more relatable location in the Midwest, Chicago.
If you look at the Almanac’s daylight tool for Chicago, there are just 9 hours, 11 minutes of daylight during the week leading up to Christmas.
By the 20th of February, daylight gain speeds up to 3 minutes per day! On the 20th, the day length is 10 hours, 53 minutes, and on the 21st, it’s 10 hours, 56 minutes.
In May, the increase slows back to 2 minutes gain per day
By the time we get to the summer solstice, the increase further slows to 1 minute a day, peaking at 15 hours and 16 minutes by the solstice.
Taken from  https://www.almanac.com/how-much-daylight-do-we-gain-after-winter-solstice
Till next time this is Becky Litterer, Becky’s Greenhouse, Dougherty Iowa [email protected]  641-794-3337  cell 641-903-9365  Beckysgreenhouse.com  Facebook Becky Kerndt Litterer or Becky’s Greenhouse