As we approach 2025, we may be surprised that the sky will offer patterns and spectacles very different from what we’ve seen this year.
For example, Mars is usually just a medium bright orange “star” that wouldn’t attract anyone’s attention. That’s because that most earthlike of all the planets has such an out-of-round orbit that when our faster moving Earth passes it every 26 months, the meeting not only occurs on alternate years, but can happen where our orbits are either widely or narrowly separated. Well, there was no meeting at all in 2024. But coming up soon, in January, we’ll finally pass Mars, and at a favorable position. Result: A single brilliant, orange, midnight star will hover high overhead. That will be Mars, and it’s been quite a while since it put on such a show.
In brilliance it will be bested only by Venus. That Evening Star, as it’s often called, was a bust throughout 2024. But January through March of 2025 it will be nicely high in the west the first few hours after nightfall, and brilliant enough to cast your shadow onto the snow.
More good news? The Sun is now at its peak in its famous eleven-year storm cycle. This explains why we’ve had such bright, uncommon aurora displays lately. But for real fireworks, join our group or go alone to one of the world’s major aurora locations. It may be the best we’ll get until the mid 2030’s.
The only disappointing sky news is that many are now justifiably psyched for total solar eclipses, if they drove to the Adirondacks or Vermont this past April 8. No total solar eclipse will again happen anywhere in our state until 2079. But those willing to travel will see one somewhere in the world on four out of five years, like in Spain in 2026 or Egypt in 2027. (Yes, we’ll be there, Enchallah!). But that means one year out of five there are none anywhere. And you guessed it — that unlucky number is 2025.
More immediate sad news is that rainbow season has now ended. Some places like Hawaii get them nearly every day. But the Hudson Valley only sees rainbows when the Sun is not high up and there is also a “sunshower” happening. You need both conditions: The Sun must be less than halfway up the sky and not behind a cloud while it’s nonetheless raining. These conditions can essentially only occur here from May through August after 5 p.m. Sunshowers seldom happen during early morning hours, and very rarely during our winter months since the sky must not be overcast, which is our gloomily normal cold weather configuration. And any nimbus or cumulus cloud bringing the required sunshower will usually be convective in origin, caused by a blob of hot rising air, which, again, doesn’t happen these next three months, at least on days ending in “y.”
Not sufficiently bummed yet? Okay, we’ll keep going. In case you don’t already know this, we’ve now fully entered the gloomy half-year stretch when, according to long-term Albany records, our region flips from 65% clear skies to mostly-cloudy conditions. An overcast day will remain more likely than even a half-sunny one until five months from now.
We simply cannot end our Looking Ahead motif on a depressing note. So in addition to a parade of dazzling planets coming up soon, here’s something very cool. In the 1990’s on this page, I reported that my day interviewing climate experts in Boulder revealed a happy surprise. Well, recent studies have supported that good news. Their climate models projected that several specific regions in the world would escape the bulk of the ill effects of climate change — and our region is one of them.
In recent years, as we’ve watched horrific forest fires destroy entire towns in California and elsewhere, read of droughts so severe that people can no longer go boating on Utah’s Lake Powell, and have seen videos of the floods in western North Carolina, at least our own drought hasn’t officially worsened to the extreme levels so often seen in the West and Southwest. Well, that’s actually in sync with predictions. We’re too elevated to suffer from any rising sea levels, have too great an annual rainfall (38”) for our woods to get as dry as tinder, are too far inland for major hurricanes to remain potent by the time they get here, and on it goes.
Given the huge real estate increases we’ve locally experienced, one wonders what will happen when millions realize that the Catskills and the mid-Hudson region are, in addition to our beauty, are also climate change sanctuaries?
Of course, we’re speaking relatively, here. We surely won’t be immune from a myriad of other effects such as pathogens like Lyme ticks and certain viruses discovering that our winters are no longer the “killing fields” that they were in the ‘80’s.
Our own good fortune hardly isolates us from the fortunes of our planet, nor lets us excuse any non-participation in helping transition from carbon pollution.
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