A reality based independent journal of observation & analysis, serving the Flathead Valley & Montana since 2006. © James Conner.
Change of seasons. Today is the last day of spring, but the day of the earliest sunrise. Tomorrow has the most daylight of the year, and the latest sunset. Using software from the U.S. Naval Observatory, I produced a sunrise, sunset, transit, and civil twilight table for the mid-Flathead Valley. You can download the table as an Excel spreadsheet. Or, you can calculate the values online at the USNO’s website.
One solar fact that surprises some: outside the tropics, the sun is never directly overhead. At its highest point during the day, at meridian transit, the sun is directly over the meridian on which one stands, an event also known as high noon and solar noon. The spreadsheet assumes a latitude of 48.3° north, putting the sun’s altitude at transit at 65° above the southern horizon, a zenith distance of 25 degrees.
The sun sets tonight at 2141 MDT at an azimuth of 308 degrees. Civil twilight ends at 2223. The actual time of sunset for your location depends on how high the horizon is above a level plain.
Plotting the sun’s path across the sky as a function of time, altitude, and azimuth can be done safely with simple tools. Making a sundial is an excellent summer family project for high school and some middle school students.
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Flathead Lake is falling. So are the rivers flowing into it. Last week, Flathead Lake filled to slightly over 2893, the legal limit, and thus may have been in technical violation of the license. Then the level of the lake began a slow decline. I’ll have more on this early next week, but for now know that the inflow to the lake is very low, barely enough to keep the lake at a constant elevation as long as Kerr Dam meets its discharge requirements under Article 56 of the dam. If you have a centerboard boat, you’re probably okay, but if you have a fixed keel, and a deep one, you may be scraping bottom in a few weeks.
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SC Gov. Nikki Haley assists Dylann Roof’s suicide scheme. She’s demanding the death penalty, hardly a surprise given the crime and the fact that no governor ever lost an election by favoring killing people convicted of heinous crimes. That wins votes. But it won’t advance our understanding of men like Roof. Keeping him alive provides a rare opportunity to study what makes him tick. Hanging him from the nearest live oak tree does not. Keeping him alive also honors the principle that we should not kill our own when they are other ways to ensure our safety.
Haley also needs to find a way to remove the Confederate flag from the confederate memorial at her state’s capitol. It commemorates South Carolina’s firing on Fort Sumpter, thus starting a long and bloody civil war to preserve slavery that the south lost. The Confederate flag’s not a symbol of southern pride or military gallantry. It’s the fighting banner of the moral degenerates who spilled barrels of blood to perpetuate slavery and promote racism. It has no place in civilized society. The Civil War is still over, Gov. Haley, and the south lost. The sight of the Confederate flag should make you sweat with shame, not swell with pride. Take down that flag. Now. Never fly it again. Lock it in the attic with the hoods, sheets, lynching ropes, and cross burning paraphernalia.