As of early this morning, Summer (Daylight) Time is over for the UK. We are out of sequence with you Muricans since you start earlier now and go longer at the end. It brings quite a change for us who live so far north. Remember, we are as far north as Moscow... The longest day of the year in Edinburgh is 17:19 long and the shortest day is 6:40 long. Therefore the longest day is 10:39 longer than the shortest day. With todays sunset scheduled for 4:42 pm, you can see that most people will be driving home in the dark. The worst is yet to come: the Winter Solstice will have sunrise just before 9 am and sunset around 3:30 pm. I have vivid memories of already teaching my first class of the day in darkness and then leaving the school in the afternoon, again in darkness. At least my school was on the top of a hill so I had a great view of the sunrise and sunset each day! The implication of this is that I would not be exposed to sunshine (or even daylight) for five days out of every seven. Health authorities seemed to be surprised of the widespread Vitamin D deficiency in Scotland. Duh! Sunshine produces the vitamin in the body. The vitamin appears to be important in relation to multiple sclerosis, allergies, childhood rickets, osteoporosis, breast and prostate cancers, rheumatoid arthritis and bowel disease. The further north, the shorter the day in the winter. If you live in Scotland you are three times more likely to be vitamin D deficient than someone in the southeast of England. So, the end of British Summer Time is more than just a reset of clocks for us...
Posted on: Sun, 26 Oct 2014 19:15:44 +0000
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