Everyone is eager to get back to warm weather, so find out when spring starts! This year marks spring’s earliest arrival since 1896. 
 
 March Equinox 2016 Show 
 
 The video (below) is a replay of the live broadcast from Saturday, March 19. It will replay all day Sunday, March 20, the first full day of spring! (We apologize for a couple of drops in the live stream Saturday and hope you enjoy this replay.) 
 
 Courtesy of our astronomy partners, SLOOH, watch telescope views of our majestic Sun from the Prescott Observatory in Arizona, as well as the spectacle of the aurora borealis. Bob Berman, SLOOH and Almanac astronomer, will discuss the significance of the equinox; Mare-Anne Jarvela, senior Almanac editor, will share wisdom on gardening and spring folklore. 
 
 Whether you’re a sky gazer, gardener, or seek a deeper connection to the ebb and flow of nature, join the global community as we all celebrate this weekend’s vernal equinox—as humans have done since antiquity. 
 
 Video: 
 
 March Equinox 2016 Dates and Times 
 
 This year, the vernal equinox arrives on Saturday, March 19 or Sunday, March 20, 2016, depending on your time zone: 
 
 Saturday, March 19, 2016 at 9:30 PM PDT 
 
 Saturday, March 19, 2016 at 10:30 PM MDT 
 
 Saturday, March 19, 2016 at 11:30 PM CDT 
 
 Sunday, March 20, 2016 at 12:30 AM EDT 
 
 Sunday, March 20, 2016 at 04:30 UTC (Universal Time) 
 
 When Does Spring Begin? 
 
 Astronomically speaking, the equinox (March 19 or 20 this year) marks spring’s beginning in the Northern Hemisphere (whereas it announces fall’s arrival in the Southern Hemisphere). The equinox happens at the same moment worldwide, even if our clock times reflect a different time zone. 
 
 Did You Know: 2016 will bring the earliest arrival of spring of our lifetime (thus far!) in the Northern Hemisphere. Find out why in Bob Berman’s article, The Earliest Spring of our Lives. 
 
 Meteorologically speaking, in the Northern Hemisphere, the official spring season always begins on March 1 and continues through May 31. Summer begins on June 1; autumn, September 1; and winter, December 1. 
 
 Weather scientists divide the year into quarters this way to make it easier to compare seasonal and monthly statistics from one year to the next. The meteorological seasons are based on annual temperature cycles rather than on the position of Earth in relation to the Sun, and they more closely follow the Gregorian calendar. Using the dates of the astronomical equinoxes and solstices for the seasons would present a statistical problem because these dates can vary slightly each year. 
 
 What is an Equinox? 
 
 At the Vernal Equinox, the Sun crosses the celestial equator on its way north along the ecliptic. 
 
 All over the world, days and nights are approximately equal. The name equinox comes from Latin words which mean “equal night”—aequus (equal) and nox (night). 
 
 Enjoy the increasing sunlight hours, with earlier dawns and later sunsets. See your personalized Sun rise and set calculator. 
 
 On the equinox, Earth’s two hemispheres are receiving the Sun’s rays about equally because the tilt of the Earth is zero relative to the Sun, which means that Earth’s axis neither points toward nor away from the Sun. (Note, however, that the Earth never orbits upright, but is always tilted on its axis by about 23.5 degrees.) 
 
 Enjoy our page on the reason for the seasons. 
 
 Scientific explanation aside, our ancestors were more connected to the Sun than we are today. They observed its pathway across the sky; they tracked how the sunrise, sunset, and daylength changed, using the Sun (and Moon) as a clock and calendar. If you have ever been to Stonehenge or Machu Picchu, you’ll see examples of ancient seasonal markers. 
 
 Equinox Facts 
 
 Question: Are Day and Night Truly Equal on the Equinox? 
 
 Answer: Nope, day and night are not exactly equal at the equinox for two reasons. First, daytime begins the moment any part of the Sun is over the horizon, and it is not over until the last part of the Sun has set. If the Sun were to shrink to a starlike point and we lived in a world without air, the spring and fall equinoxes would truly have ‘equal nights.’ 
 
 Read more about why day and night are NOT quite equal. 
 
 Signs of the Equinox in Nature 
 
 The vernal equinox signals the beginning of nature’s renewal in the Northern Hemisphere! 
 
 Worms begin to emerge from the earth. Even the March Moon is called “The Full Worm Moon” for this reason. 
 
 Notice the arc of the Sun across the sky as it shifts toward the north. Birds are migrating northward, along with the path of the Sun. 
 
 Speaking of birds, did you know that the increasing sunlight triggers bird song? Cool, eh? Enjoy our Bird Songs page. 
 
 Trees, shrubs and flowers are sensitive to temperature and daylength, too! Since ancient days, people have used them as indicators of when the weather is right for planting. For example: Blooming crocus are your cue to plant radishes, parsnips and spinach. See more of nature’s signs 
 
 Of course, the longer days bring warmer weather! Both we and the animals around us strip off our clothes and heavy coats! 
 
 Ready, set, plant! March is time to start gardens and sow seeds in many regions. See your personalized Best Planting Dates. 
 
 Question: According to folklore, you can stand a raw egg on its end on the equinox. Is this true? 
 
 Answer: Folklore or not, this egg trick sounded like a bit of fun to us. One spring, a few minutes before the vernal equinox, several Almanac editors tried this trick. For a full workday, 17 out of 24 eggs stood standing. Three days later, we tried this trick again and found similar results. Perhaps 3 days after the equinox was still too near. Perhaps the equinox has nothing to do with it. Perhaps we just don’t like to take ourselves too seriously! Try this yourself and let us know what happens. 
 
 Spring Verse 
 
 One swallow does not make a spring. 
 
 Bluebirds are a sign of spring; warm weather and gentle south breezes they bring. 
 
 In spring, no one thinks of the snow that fell last year. 
 
 Don’t say that spring has come until you can put your foot on nine daisies. 
 
 Spring-time sweet! 
 
 The whole Earth smiles, thy coming to greet. 
 
 Look around! Observe! What are the signs of spring in your region? Please share below! 
 
 More seasonal pages: 
 
 When is the next summer solstice? 
 
 When is the autumnal equinox? 
 
 When is the winter solstice? ||||| This year will mark my seventh birthday. 
 
 You may find that statement confusing, given that I’m an adult woman. But nevertheless I’ll be turning 28 years old on Feb. 29—a leap day. 
 
 To make sense of my baffling predicament, you first need to understand what leap days are and why leap years exist in the first place. 
 
 The way we measure time on Earth is a bit complicated. For example, we measure years by the length of time it takes our planet to orbit the sun. We call this a “solar” or “tropical” year. But while most of us understand a year as comprising 365 days, that’s not exactly right. The precise measure of a solar year is 365.24219 days. 
 
 That might seem like an insignificant difference. But those numbers at the end of the decimal point add up. Without any sort of adjustment for the extra quarter of a day, seasons as we know them would eventually become very different. Winter would feel like summer, and we’d have Christmas in July. Without any sort of adjustment for the extra quarter of a day, seasons as we know them would become very different. 
 
 In 46 BCE, Roman dictator Julius Caesar sought to fix this problem. He introduced the Julian calendar—an amended version of the existing Roman calendar. A year, he said, would now include 365 days, with an extra leap day—or intercalary day—every fourth year. 
 
 While this solution was inventive, it wasn’t quite right, according to physicist Judah Levine, a man the Washington Post once dubbed “the nation’s timekeeper.” 
 
 “It’s not exactly a quarter of an extra day; it’s a little less,” Levine, who works in the time and frequency division of the National Institute of Standards and Technology in Boulder, Colorado, tells Quartz. “And so adding one day every four years was too much.” 
 
 That miscalculation resulted in a surplus of 11 minutes each year. By the 1500s, the Julian calendar and the solar year were misaligned by about 10 days. So in 1582, Pope Gregory XIII established the Gregorian calendar and introduced the century rule, Levine explains. 
 
 “If a leap year falls on a century, a year ending in double zeroes, you only add a leap day if it’s divisible by 400,” he says. “For that reason 1900 wasn’t a leap year but 2000 was.” “If a leap year falls on a century, a year ending in double zeroes, you only add a leap day if it’s divisible by 400.” 
 
 In 2100, we’ll skip it again, forcing leap babies to wait a total of eight years to celebrate their birthday. 
 
 Within the US, there are two notable communities that encourage leap babies to come together and celebrate. One is the Leap Year Birthday Celebration in the town of Anthony, which straddles the border between Texas and New Mexico. This year, that celebration will include a wine tasting, cowboy re-enactments, and a parade. 
 
 Anthony was declared the Leap Year Capital of the World in 1988 after Mary Ann Brown, a resident who was born Feb. 29, 1932, petitioned the governors of Texas and New Mexico to make the title official. 
 
 “It’s a special privilege,” Benjamin Romero, mayor pro-tem of Anthony, Texas, tells Quartz. “This year we have leap day babies coming from as far as Australia, India, and England.” 
 
 The other outlet is the Honor Society of Leap Year Day Babies, where fellow leapers can get together online and commiserate. The National Center for Health Statistics tracks birth rates, but they don’t keep statistics on the number of babies born on specific days. Raenell Dawn, co-founder of Honor Society of Leap Year Day Babies, and her co-founder Peter Brouwer—both leapers themselves—estimate that the odds of bearing this distinctive honor is around one in 1,461. 
 
 “It’s about 684 in a million,” Dawn says. “There are about 200,000 in the United States and just under 5 million worldwide.” 
 
 My fellow leap babies and I are a small enough group to maintain a feeling of exclusivity, but large enough to spark a healthy dialogue. This means that while my fellow leap babies and I are a small enough group to maintain a feeling of exclusivity, we’re also large enough to spark a healthy community dialogue. And once we get to talking, it’s evident that many of our individual struggles are really quite universal. One of the topics frequently discussed is which day leap babies should use to celebrate their birthday on off-years. 
 
 According to Dawn, “it’s close to 50-50.” 
 
 Some opt for Feb. 28, saying the last day of February is most accurate, while others insist March 1 is more correct because they were born the day following Feb. 28. Then there’s the camp that believes time of day is the determining factor—if you were born in the morning, the 28th is yours, but if you were delivered past noon, it’s the 1st. It can all get rather heated. 
 
 But by far the most popular topic of conversation among leaplings is the bureaucratic problems we all inevitably face. This red-tape nightmare can take many forms. Sometimes it’s as small as not being able to select our birth date from a drop-down menu online—or those several years when Facebook didn’t acknowledge we had a birthday. Often it’s more substantial, like dealing with inaccurate legal documents. 
 
 By far the most popular topic of conversation among leaplings is the bureaucratic problems we all inevitably face. And all modern leap babies have to navigate these snafus for two milestones. Both our 18th and 21st birthdays fall on off-years, and US states have historically struggled to figure out a workable solution. When I was younger, my driver’s license in Florida listed my real birthday, but it also read “under 21 until 2/29/2009,” a date that didn’t actually exist. As for my 18th, well, it was up to individual businesses to determine whether they considered me legal on Feb. 28 or March 1. Results varied. 
 
 Dawn says this is all too common, and there’s no standard for how Feb. 29 birthdays are handled. It differs from state to state, and case to case. 
 
 “There’s one leapling I talked to whose birthday certificate says February 28 and her license says March 1,” Dawn said. “February 29 isn’t listed on either document.” 
 
 But despite the occasional headache, I think all leap babies derive a certain pride from their semi-unique status. Many people say it makes them feel special, not to mention enabling them to go all out celebrating those rare “real” birthdays. Leap babies are also fond of claiming that we’re inherently young at heart. 
 
 My mom always offered me the same consolation, telling me that I’d thank her one day–on the morning when I can truthfully tell the world I’m only 10 instead of 40. 
 
 Follow Rachel on Twitter at @rkwise. We welcome your comments at ideas@qz.com. ||||| These San Francisco sunbathers may not know it, but spring is losing about 30 seconds every year. 
 
 Spring arrives on Friday, and you might want to make the most of it. The season of flowers and showers actually gets shorter every year by about 30 seconds to a minute, due to astronomical quirks, researchers say. 
 
 This year, spring officially starts at 6:45 p.m. EDT on March 20, according to the U.S. National Weather Service (NSW). At that exact moment, which is called the vernal equinox, the Earth's axis will reach a halfway mark, where it points neither toward the sun (as it does on the summer solstice) nor away from the sun (as it does on the winter solstice), said Gavin Schmidt, the director of the Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York City. 
 
 But for thousands of years, spring has been losing time in the Northern Hemisphere. This year, summer is the longest season, with 93.65 days, followed by spring with 92.76 days, autumn with 89.84 days and winter with 88.99 days, said Larry Gerstman, an amateur astronomer in New York. (Gerstman got his values from "The Astronomical Tables for the Sun, Moon and Planets," second edition, written by Jean Meeus and published in 1995 by Willmann-Bell, Inc.) 
 
 As the years go on, spring will lose time to summer, and winter will lose time to autumn. In the year 3000, the seasonal lengths will have shifted in the Northern Hemisphere: summer will be 93.92 days, while spring will be 91.97 days, autumn 90.61 days and winter 88.74 days, Gerstman said. [6 Signs Spring Has Sprung] 
 
 But why is this happening? 
 
 The Earth's seasons are caused by the tilt of the Earth on its axis (not by how close the planet is to the sun). This tilt of 23.5-degrees from the straight-up-and-down position means that for six months of the year, the Earth's Northern Hemisphere is leaning slightly toward the sun, whereas during the other six months, the Southern Hemisphere leans toward the sun. 
 
 The main reason spring is getting shorter is that the Earth's axis itself moves, much like a wobbling top, in a type of motion called precession. 
 
 Spring ends at the summer solstice, and because of precession, the point along the Earth's orbit where the planet reaches the summer solstice shifts slightly. Next year, the planet will reach the point in its orbit of the solstice slightly earlier. 
 
 Spring will end, and summer will begin, just a little bit earlier in the year. [50 Interesting Facts About The Earth] 
 
 Over thousands of years, the shift in the time of the vernal equinox becomes more apparent. For instance, spring will be shortest in about the year 8680, measuring about 88.5 days, or about four days shorter than this year's spring, Gerstman said. (After that point, spring will lengthen again.) 
 
 Why spring is shorter than summer 
 
 Other aspects of Earth's movements also affect the exact length of the seasons. One is that Earth's orbit around the sun is not a perfect circle, but instead is elliptical. This means that the planet is not always the same distance from the sun. These days, Earth reaches the point in its orbit where it is closest to the sun, an event called perihelion, in early January. (In Greek, peri means near, and helios signifies the sun.) 
 
 At the point of perihelion, the Earth is about 91.6 million miles (148 million kilometers) away from the sun. When the Earth is farthest from the sun — in early July, during aphelion — the distance is about 94.8 million miles (153 million km). 
 
 This graphic shows an exaggeration of Earth's elliptical orbit around the sun. The planet is closest to the sun in January, during the Northern Hemisphere's winter. Credit: NASA 
 
 This change in distance from the sun, of about 3.2 million miles (5 million km), isn't much compared to Earth's total distance from the sun, according to NASA, and people don't notice it. But the difference is large enough to change the speed of the Earth as it travels in its orbit. The Earth moves fastest when it's closest to the sun, and slowest when it's farthest, Schmidt said. 
 
 "We go through winter quite quickly, whereas in the summertime we're far away from the sun, and so we're going to go slower,"Schmidt told Live Science. 
 
 This change in speeds affects the length of the seasons. The Earth moves the fastest along its orbit path between December and March, hence both winter and spring are shorter than summer and autumn, he said. 
 
 In the year 1246, Earth reached perihelion on the day of December solstice, said Joe Rao, a New York based meteorologist and astronomer (Rao is also a contributing writer at Live Science.) This year, Earth reached perihelion on Jan. 4. 
 
 "Near the year 3000, perihelion will take place near Jan. 20, and near the year 4000, it will take place near Feb. 7, and so on," Rao told Live Science in an email. 
 
 At these distant dates, the Earth will be moving at its fastest speed later during the year, making spring even shorter. Perihelion will occur on the March equinox in the year 6430. 
 
 But spring will be shortest when perihelion occurs halfway through the season. And eventually, as perihelion and precession continue to change Earth's speed and wobble, spring will lengthen again, Schmidt said. 
 
 However, these changes are so minute that most people won't notice a difference during their lifetimes, Schmidt said. In fact, since most people associate spring with warm weather, he said, they will be more likely to notice that warm weather is beginning earlier in the year, because of climate change, than to be aware of the changing orbit. 
 
 "It's not something that anyone is going to notice unless you're an astronomer or a paleoclimatologist," Schmidt said. 
 
 Follow Laura Geggel on Twitter @LauraGeggel. Follow Live Science @livescience, Facebook & Google+. Original article on Live Science.
– Residents of the Northeast are expecting a snowstorm this weekend, but they can warm themselves with one thought: It's spring. The new season officially arrives at 12:30am EDT on Sunday, March 20, notes the Old Farmer's Almanac. And as EarthSky points out, this happens to be the earliest arrival of spring since 1896—the result of a fluke in the calendar. "In a nutshell, this earliest spring is happening because the tropical year, as measured between successive March equinoxes, doesn't have an even number of days (365.242 days)," explains the post. And so leap years (366 days) vs. non-leap years (365 days) adjust its timing. And Pope Gregory XIII threw a wrench into things: In 1582 he decreed that leap year not fall on centennial years, unless that year was divisible by four—so 2000 was considered a leap year, but not 1900. That "causes the March equinox to arrive roughly three-quarters of a day earlier in the 21st century than at corresponding years in the 20th century," explains the post. Every four years, the March equinox will shift earlier, ultimately bringing us to the earliest one of the 21st century: 10:03am March 19, 2096. Come 2100, where there is also no leap year, the March equinox times will be pushed forward, and will once again occur on March 21 in 2102. As for that potential nor'easter, it looks like Sunday will be the day for snow, but much remains iffy about the forecast, reports Weather.com.