Technically, the start of spring is just a date on the calendar and a time on the clock.
But, everyone's favourite season (I'm making assumptions here) is also a feeling, a lightening of spirit, an elevated state of being and reason for optimism.
After a long winter, spring is a welcome visitor, a long-awaited breath of fresh air.
Spring kind of snuck up on us this year.
Usually winter morphs into spring on March 21.
But through the quirks of astronomy, the earth tilting a little closer to the sun and the sun crossing the equator heading north in what's called spring equinox or vernal equinox, spring made its appearance today at 2:24 pm.
Equinox in Latin means 'equal night,' so today's equinox means there should be an equal amount of night and day.
However, sunrise was this morning at 7 am and sunset will be 7:09 pm, so through another anomaly of astronomy we'll actually get 12 hours and nine minutes of daylight.
Whether you care about this science or not, it means spring is here and the days are longer, brighter and warmer.
Everybody can get on board with that.
"Yes, it's spring equinox today," said Environment Canada meteorologist Derek Lee.
"But for the purposes of collecting weather data, we consider meteorological spring to be the three months March 1 to May 31."
As such, depending on how you want to measure it, we've already had 20 days of spring.
Regardless, the spring weather forecast looks pretty good.
"Right now we're getting a nice ridge of high pressure that's brought sunny skies, more sunlight and daytime high temperatures of 10 to 12 degrees," said Lee.
"The rest of spring should hold no major surprises. By the time we get into April, overnight lows should be above 0C and daytime highs could get up to 16C. And it will continue to build through May with longer days and daytime highs up to 20C."
In keeping with the April-showers-bring-May-flowers mantra, the average amount of monthly precipitation increases from 22 mm in March to 29 mm in April.
However, April isn't actually the wettest month with May at 40 mm and June peaking with 46 mm.
As such, spring weather can be all over the place, so depending on the day you may or may not need a jacket, sunglasses and-or an umbrella.
Happy spring!
