Ben Lowry: The wonder of low-angled sunshine in January in Northern Ireland
We report Northern Ireland weather extremes on page three, based on Met Office data.
I was struck by an article we ran earlier this week, also written by Adam Kula, in which Armagh said it was one of their sunniest ever Decembers. It was certainly my sense that we had many fine days in December, and we have been having many wonderful wintry sunny days in January too (since writing this article on Friday for the Saturday paper, there has been heavy rain and Ben Lowry took a video of the resulting flooding here)
Sunny days are one of the great joys of this time of year, given the darkness. The lack of overall daylight in December and January, the two darkest months of the calendar, is an obvious reason why sunshine is welcome. Another reason is that we get a lower percentage of sunshine during daylight hours in winter. In other words, not only are the days shorter but that smaller amount of daylight is marred by a lower percentage of sunshine in those paltry hours – a double whammy.
A further reason why sun is a joy now is that the angle of the sun is so low that it can penetrate much further into a house than it does in summer. Like many people I now partly work from home and get to experience the joy of such winter sunlight far more than I once did.
Meanwhile, we have 40 minutes of extra daylight in the evening – already – compared to the earliest sunset.
Ben Lowry (@Benlowry2) is News Letter editor