The summer solstice – the annual moment at which the sun is the highest it ever gets in the sky – occurs today at 1:16 p.m. ET. This time also marks the beginning of astronomical summer in the Northern Hemisphere.
Druids and pagans gathered this morning at Stonehenge in England to celebrate the solstice festival, which dates back thousands of years.
Specifically, the summer solstice is the moment when the sun is directly above the Tropic of Cancer. This is the farthest north the sun ever moves in the sky, which is why the days near the solstice have the most daylight of any days of the year. Today, for instance, Washington, D.C., will have almost 15 hours of daylight and only about nine hours of darkness.
You often hear that the summer solstice is the "official" beginning of summer, although there doesn't appear to be any law or government proclamation that makes the equinoxes and solstices the "official' changes in the seasons. (Readers, care to weigh in on this below?)
The solstice is really only the astronomical beginning of summer. Meteorologists consider summer to be the hottest three months of June, July and August, which in terms of weather for those of us down here on Earth is more realistic than mid-June to mid-September.
For example, don't tell the sun-baked residents of Laredo, Texas, that summer starts only today… They've already endured 33 consecutive days of temperatures of 100 degrees or higher, including a blistering 113 degrees last Friday. And that's without a drop of rain since May 16.
The Climate Prediction Center's latest forecast for the remainder of summer is for continued warmer-than-average temperatures for the southern tier of the USA, and slightly cooler-than-average temperatures for the northern Rockies and northern Plains.