Spring is here! What exactly is the vernal equinox?

AccuWeather's Melissa Constanzer takes a look at what the vernal equinox is.

Transcript

00:00The bees were back in action in central Pennsylvania yesterday. Beautiful flowers coming up

00:06and there were a lot of them out there which by the way is the end of winter and now we are

00:12officially in spring. So say hello to more views of the crocuses or whatever you've got going on

00:19in your outside yard or just around the neighborhood because there's going to be a lot

00:23more springing up on you as we head through the upcoming months. Of course that's because the

00:28days are getting longer but this morning the vernal equinox took place. Vernal coming from

00:33the latin derivation ver meaning spring and then you add the vernal to make it more spring things.

00:40So vernal equinox is spring equinox the start of astronomical spring. It also translate with

00:45the equinox to equal day and equal night and it happens at a specific moment as the sun's rays

00:50are kind of directly on the equator there. But you can see the earth's tilt is on its axis here.

00:57The tilt is actually what gives us the seasons and as it makes its transition its orbit around

01:03the sun when this the axis is tilted away that's winter when it's tilted towards that summer and

01:10in between we have the vernal and autumnal equinoxes. So as we head into spring or as we

01:16head into autumn and of course we are in spring as far as the calendar is concerned as far as

01:22meteorological spring we actually entered that on march 1st because we need this for record keeping

01:27right for meteorologists we love to know historical facts of the months and the seasons and if they're

01:33warmer or cooler than a historical average so this is why we kind of group those months into

01:38certain categories but of course if you want a little bit more on the details of spring what's

01:43coming in your area be sure to head to the spring forecast on accuweather.com