It’s time to officially wave goodbye to winter, as today marks the first day of spring. For us in the Northern Hemisphere, the spring equinox marks the first day of spring, whereas in the Southern Hemisphere, autumn has just begun.
This morning saw the Spring Equinox, which occurred at exactly 03.49am. At this point, the length of the day and the night are nearly equal.
What is the spring equinox?
There are two equinoxes every year in the Northern Hemisphere, one in spring and one in autumn. It marks the exact point when the sun positions itself right on the equator between the two hemispheres, making the day and the night an almost equal length.
Equinoxes and other astronomical events like solstices are key events in the cycle of the Earth around the sun, with the spring equinox celebrated as a time of rebirth. As a part of this, holidays such as Easter and Passover are all celebrated around this time too.
For us, the changing of the clocks tends to symbolise the start of warmer weather, longer evenings and chocolate eggs beginning to creep their way onto supermarket shelves.
The next event to mark the start of spring will be the clocks going forward next Sunday, 29th March.
When and why do the clocks go forward?
The idea was first pushed for at the beginning of the 20th century. People wanted the clocks to go forward so they had lighter and longer evenings. As well as this, it was to save electricity and allow people to use more natural light instead.
This year the clocks will go forward an hour at 1am on Sunday 29th March, which does unfortunately mean you will lose an hour of sleep. Right now we are on Greenwich Mean Time (GMT), but after we jump forward we will be on British Summer Time (BST).
Thankfully most smart phones, computers and other devices will update the time automatically, but don’t forget to change your watch if it’s manual.
British Summer Time lasts for a good few months, and just as we ‘spring forward’, we will ‘fall back’ to GMT time on Sunday 25th October.
