#2343 "Singleton Spring Eve Sunset"

A warm conveyor belt was charging out of the southwestern horizon. Langmuir cirrus shafts at the highest levels were shooting ahead of the thicker and more organized layers of cirrostratus further to the southwest. The streaks of cirrus were distorted with the wind shear between the different layers of the atmosphere. The ice crystals of the cloud were shaped in unison across the entire conveyor belt. The process was similar to that for mare’s tails and one could easily brand these patterns with that equestrian name. Sometimes the weather is indeed like a horse race placing your bets on how the weather will evolve and doing your best to get the forecast out before the reality occurs.

The ice that filled the west basin of Singleton Lake was a chameleon that took on different colours depending on the light and even the temperature. In the sunset light there was a crimson grey colour to the ice.

In 2020, the spring equinox (also called the March equinox or vernal equinox) occurs on Thursday, March 19, which is earlier than it's been in over a century! This event marks the astronomical first day of spring in the Northern Hemisphere. 2020 Thursday, March 19, at 11:50 P.M. EDT. As a result spring had actually arrived a couple of days earlier than my painting at 11:50 P.M. EDT on Thursday, March 19, 2020. I was just slow catching up.

The word equinox comes from the Latin words for "equal night"—aequus (equal) and nox (night). On the equinox, the length of day and night is nearly equal in all parts of the world. On the March equinox, the Sun crosses the celestial equator from south to north. It's called the "celestial equator" because it's an imaginary line in the sky above the Earth's equator. If you were standing on the equator, the Sun would pass directly overhead on its way north. Equinoxes are the only two times a year that the Sun rises due east and sets due west for all of us on Earth.

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