By Joe Tatulli
One of my favorite days – The Winter Solstice
If you happen to read this edition of the RUMBLE on the day it is published, usually the Friday before a monthly meeting, and for this month (December) that would be Friday, December 5th, then we are only sixteen days from the winter solstice on December 21st. “Hey Joey why is the winter solstice one of your favorite days?” To be clear (and like most of you) I like the other three seasons better than I like winter. Winter is cold and it tends to snow now and then. Riding Valentina isn’t always as pleasant and easy as it is during the other three seasons.
Here’s a list:
1. Can’t ride in the snow or sleet.
RI averages from 20 to 55 inches of snow each year, with Block Island averaging 20 inches and north western portions of the state (like Salty Brine always said, “Foster Glocester”) averaging 50-55 inches.1
2. Too cold to ride.
Personally I am not crazy about riding in the cold weather but if the sun is shining and it’s above freezing and it’s Saturday breakfast time I usually suck it up and head out. I’ve finally found a great heated shirt from Warm & Safe, and that goes over my OSBMWR turtleneck, and then my riding jacket. Oh yea, I also wear my base layer long johns under my Aerostich Roadcrafter Classic – Light pants. Last winter we had a little snow and it was seasonally colder than 2023 so not much riding .
Okay it’s a short list but you get the idea. It’s cold and wintery in the winter. So why do I like the winter solstice?
The winter solstice is the shortest day of the year. This year the sun will rise at 7:09 AM and set at 4:17PM with an official day length of only 9:08:07, the shortest day of the year. That means that at that moment in time the earth will have reached the place in its orbit around the sun where its northern hemisphere is most tilted away from the sun. It also means that from that moment on, continuing to the summer solstice on June 20th, that days start getting longer, and for me that’s a happy day.
It starts slow. December 22nd’s day length is only three seconds longer than the 21st, but when MotoGP races are won by hundredths of a second three seconds is an eternity. By February 1st the day length is up to 10:04:07, almost an hour more sunlight, and by the first day of spring (the Spring Equinox on March 20th) the day length is up to 12:09:40, another two hours longer. That will continue through June 20th, the summer solstice, when the day length will be over sixteen hours. Sixteen hours! That’s what I think about during the winter to keep my spirits up while I read biographies and history books, and hopefully catch a a nice weather break and ride Valentina to Tuesday Breakfast as often as winter allows.
Below is a countdown clock to the December 21st, 2025 Winter Solstice.
Countdown to Winter Solstice 2025
1 RI DEM, Climatology, Overview of Climate in Rhode Island https://dem.ri.gov/climate/climate-overview-ri.php
(This is an edited reprint of my article from last December)